Green With Genuine Brightness

by LucyMabely

Lucy & the rest of Team Natsu get beaten by a thief named Kotomi. The dark mage also uses a powerful spell to swap bodies with Lucy, and she steals her keys while fooling the team about her identity. The real Lucy is found by Sting, but Natsu's team believes Kotomi instead. Can Sting comfort Lucy & help her get her life back? Will their friendship lead to something more? StiCy.

52. Chapter 52

Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail.

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Chapter 51: Friendships & Sisters! Rapid Winds & Dark Flames! Vicious Rematches & Heated Rivalries! Strategic Teamwork! Lucy vs. Emiria! Risa vs. Hiyasu!

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Emiria and Hiyasu walked on the dark blue grass, going past some flowerbeds that contained roses in the shade of Tiffany blue, and the girls had gone across one of the stone bridges to be in this new section of the ice garden. They were several feet behind the frosty tree that suffered burns from Emiria's ice on a previous winter day prior to the start of this festival, and Emiria glanced in that direction to see if there was any obvious way of finding Risa or Kotomi. The fact that Kotomi Takeuchi was back for another round of fighting only made Emiria smirk, as she recalled how the first battle involved Kotomi using several techniques that hardly turned the tide of the battle in her favor.

Emiria simply placed her hands together in a gentle manner while having the emotion of arrogance enter her cerulean blue eyes, and she simply built up some Ice Goddess Slayer Magic in her hands. Emiria would be ready to attack Kotomi with a high-level spell, along with moving at high speeds, and she believed that there was no way for her or Hiyasu to lose. The two women had even been prominent dark mages of Cerulean Frost, and illegally taking jobs that involved taking down strong opponents had been a great way for Emiria to gain information primarily from experiences with fighting other wizards.

She had several encounters with wizards who wielded Wind Magic, allowing Emiria to get a basic and clear grasp on their general kinds of spells. Having an easy understanding of their types of spells also made Emiria attempt to make notes of those mages' weaknesses, and Emiria felt like this little rematch wouldn't be any different than going up against other dark mages. In fact, Emiria looked at Hiyasu for a moment to see that her younger sister had a confident facial expression. Hiyasu didn't believe that there was a chance for Risa to defeat her, as she had fought against pink-haired psychic wizards in the past after obtaining the Azure Stone.

The stone's power allowed Hiyasu to sense magic while she chose to squat down for a moment, gently closing her pale blue eyes, and she made an azure blue aura surround her hands. She gently put her hands down into a large puddle of blue water that was nearby, and the Water Magic from the slowly-evaporating puddle went back into her hands. The water puddle had been on some sleet that had been quite wet, water droplets even falling from a small piece of the drenched snow, and removing one hand from the puddle for a water droplet to touch the magic on her soaked palm allowed Hiyasu to somewhat get a lock on the magical energies of her opponents.

"Emiria, I can't pinpoint their exact location. However, they're still somewhere in the ice gardens." Hiyasu explained to Emiria in a calm tone, opening her eyes and looking somewhat emotionless.

That prompted Emiria to reply with a satisfied smile on her face, before her eyes were filled with a look of realization, "Hiyasu, you managed to get some great information. If those punks haven't fled from the ice garden yet, then they're definitely planning on fighting us. Don't lower your guard, sis."

Upon hearing a tree on the other side of the fast-moving river unusually shake with its blue leaves loudly rustling, Emiria thought to herself as her lips formed a confident grin, "They're here!"

"Psi!" Lucy strangely yelled to her enemies while jumping down towards them from the tree with Risa by her side, looking fierce as she pointed two of her left hand's fingers towards Hiyasu.

As Hiyasu both looked a bit startled by Lucy's unorthodox move, Risa quickly activated the spell known as Shimmering Magenta Luxe. Risa hastily shot out a magenta pink sphere from her mouth, aiming it down at Hiyasu, and there was a cerise pink sphere in the center of the magenta attack. Risa fired it with a high amount of speed while a magenta pink aura surrounded her body, and she watched Hiyasu counter the attack with a spell called Azure Stream. The woman with light blue hair fired a fast-moving stream of light blue bubbles from her left hand, the Water Magic having a high amount of density, and the opposing spells quickly collided!

The collision resulted in a magenta pink blast occurring, followed by an azure blue blast, but the high amount of wind that had been created quickly got absorbed by Lucy loudly inhaling it. She wasted no time with trying to consume it like a Sky Dragon Slayer or Sky God Slayer, and Lucy even stretched out her hands for them to take in the winds that roared through the ice garden. She hastily sent a high amount of Wind Magic down into her feet, before activating Kaze's Feather Dance, and two mint green wings quickly fell down to her feet. They disappeared as rapidly as they came, almost like Lucy was accelerating the flow of magic through her body.

That accelerated flow of magic allowed Lucy to move at much faster speeds than her level of running speed in the past, and she wasted no time with activating her first spell of Plant Magic. Lucy used the Green Flower Bomb spell, which made her shoot out seven pale green daffodils without stems from her left hand. Lucy had entirely kept her eyes on Emiria's current position in the ice garden, knowing exactly where she stood in relation to other objects, and Lucy had aimed her spell at Emiria. The older of the two Hidenka sisters dodged the attack, and she was intent on striking back at Lucy for trying to move faster than her in a battle.

"You're pretty quick with your attacks, Kotomi! Although, let's see if you can even defend yourself! Blizzard's Icy Winds!" Emiria shouted in a somewhat annoyed manner, before firing a massive beam of light blue icy energy from her mouth.

Lucy shouted sternly, pointing with her fingers as a reaction to Emiria's attack, "Psi!"

Hiyasu thought to herself while looking surprised, ignoring how Lucy's first spell detonated to create pale green blasts against an icy stalagmite, "What's with this shift in Kotomi's battling style?"

Without a word, Risa put her hands beside her and stretched them forward to fire the spell known as Psychic Magenta's Hexing Flames. The spiraling beam of flames was alternating between being in the regular shade of pink and the magenta shade of pink, and the spell's high level of speed allowed it to viciously clash with Emiria's large attack. All of the flames ended up bursting in pink and magenta explosions, due to Emiria's ice destabilizing their hot temperatures by nearly freezing them, and the hot bursts of fire started to bring more heat to the coldness of the ice garden.

Hiyasu was about to put out the flames from the explosions by using Azure Akuruga to slash at them with chilly Water Magic, but she and Emiria were both caught off-guard by Lucy moving incredibly fast after consuming more wind! Lucy nearly got close to Emiria, who quickly leapt to the right after Lucy immediately shot out the Forest's Verdant Energy Ball from her mouth. Despite seeing Emiria evade the attack, Lucy was glad to aim it straight ahead. The sphere made contact with the icy stalagmite, before bursting to leave behind pale green powder that glittered, and that glittery powder being intertwined with the first's spell's similarly-explosive powder resulted in the appearance of pale green blasts that were quite large!

Their strength smashed through the ice, the blasts' noises even overshadowing the sounds of the ice breaking apart, and a man who had been trapped was now set free. He wasted no time with running to the ice garden's nearest exit, but Lucy purposely joined the other women in keeping their eyes away from him. She turned back to Emiria with a confident smile on her face, before inhaling more wind, and Lucy chose to jump across the river. She surprisingly ran away from Emiria and Hiyasu, who both saw Risa follow her while staying a short distance away, and Lucy was glad to let the strategy occur. Part of the strategy also involved making Emiria and Hiyasu follow them, and Lucy hoped to be like a hunter who would lead their prey into obvious tricks and traps.

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Lucy and Risa quickly led Emiria and Hiyasu up the river to go past the parents and a daughter who had all been frozen by stalagmites, but just leading the enemies to a location wouldn't stop them from using their own dangerous skills. Emiria activated the spell known as Graceful Glacia, and Emiria fired a spiraling light blue beam of energy from her right hand. The attack created a light blue explosion that was in an average size, but the sight of the attack hitting the ground prompted Lucy to prepare herself for what would immediately happen afterwards. Emiria aimed her other hand up at the ice garden's ceiling to unleash the Frigid Hail spell, and she fired several pale blue spheres into the energy. However, Emiria kept her eyes focused on the ground.

As several large shards of ice emerge from the ground to form the appearance of a crown, Lucy hastily used three fingers to gesture for Risa to shoot an attack at them. Risa activated the spell called Gleaming Magenta Psi Aurora, which made her be surrounded by a magenta pink sphere of Psychic Magic, and she immediately made the sphere burst for its magenta-colored waves of energy to all go towards the ice shards. They created several magenta pink explosions, the waves being explosive enough to create high levels of heat against the ice shards, and Lucy decided to not waste this opportunity for using a powerful attack.

She used the third spell of Plant Magic, which was known as Ivy Grove Constrict, and Lucy jumped up several feet into the air before quickly coming down to aggressively slam her hands down on the ground. She even stretched her arms towards the ground on her descent, seeming like she wanted to do a handstand, but Lucy's hands slamming against the ground created an impact that was reminiscent of plant roots wildly moving underground to simulate the feeling of an earthquake. This wasn't Earth Magic, and a pale green aura of Plant Magic engulfed Lucy's hands. She sent her aura of botanical energy down into the ground, causing the terrain in this part of the ice garden to temporarily have its dark blue grass be replaced by pale green grass, and the new grass had large plant roots suddenly emerge from behind Emiria!

The coldhearted rival quickly clenched her right fist, resulting in the pale blue spheres from earlier exploding to make many chunks of pale blue ice come down in the form of a hailstorm. The hail struck the three plant roots, causing them to instantly freeze from the hail creating frigid blasts of Ice Goddess Slayer Magic, but the somewhat new environment only made nine more plant roots come out of the ground. Lucy swiftly touched one that was nearby, absorbing its strength, and that led to the consequence of having nine pale green leaves float around her waist in a clockwise direction as they rotated positions. Hiyasu wondered if that would lead into Lucy's next attack, as the hail kept freezing the plant roots. Lucy made herself look provoked by that in an irritated manner, prompting her to use the high speed from Kaze's Feather Dance, and Lucy propelled herself through the air in different directions at high speeds as the icy explosions transpired. Lucy lunged straight down towards Emiria, causing the smug woman to hastily charge up a Frost Orb, but Lucy inhaled wind and used Kaze's Feather Dance at the last moment of falling down in midair before any collisions could occur.

"Wait, where did she go?" Emiria asked in a startled tone of voice, as she looked quite shocked at Lucy's swift disappearance and ignored Risa running past Hiyasu.

Lucy shouted fiercely, aiming her fingers straight at Hiyasu instead of Emiria, "Psi!"

Hiyasu quickly told Emiria in a concerned tone, alerting her sister of an incoming attack, "They're behind us!"

As Hiyasu and Emiria turned around, Risa unleashed the spell called Shadowy Psychic's Psychokinetic Magenta Scream. Risa fired a large and spiraling burst of magenta-colored psychic energy from her mouth, and she watched her opponents lunge to different areas of the riverbank as a way of evading the attack. Risa watched her psychic attack be large enough to strike two of the ice stalagmites that contained a young girl's parents, and the massive magenta blast occurred! It broke through their frigid prisons of ice, which had been weakened by both Lucy's third spell and Risa's earlier actions that made this part of the riverbank be a somewhat warmer environment than the rest of the ice garden, and the parents wasted no time with running across the nearby bridge to reach the nearest exit after realizing that hostages were being freed.

Another hostage would be set free, since Lucy shot out the Forest's Verdant Energy Ball spell from her mouth. but the attack would be different than last time. Lucy grabbed two of the pale green leaves that rotated around her body, and she threw them towards the sphere in the same manner as throwing spinning shuriken. The leaves quickly made contact with the sphere, before being absorbed by it to provide the attack with more magical power and density. and Lucy confidently smiled from how her attack instantly detonated in a large pale green blast after striking the icy spike! The ice stalagmite's sound of entirely breaking apart was overshadowed by the loudness of the blast, and the young girl who had been trapped quickly made herself run away from the dangerous situation. Regardless of if she'd get injuries from the blast, surviving was more important.

Survival was also important to Lucy, who grabbed Risa's hand right before they ran across the nearby stone bridge to reach a section of the ice garden that had light blue Fuji flowers hanging down from the trees. Lucy placed her right hand against the sapphire blue tree bark, before absorbing the tree's Plant Magic. She activated the fourth spell of Plant Magic, which was known as Menacing Meadow Bloom, and Lucy aimed her right hand at some of the other trees while a pale green aura engulfed her body. The aura struck the ten frost-covered trees, causing ten rows of pale green roses to instantly bloom from under the dark blue grass, and the roses fired several pale green seeds from their pistils. The seeds were quickly intercepted by Hiyasu, who applied Water Magic to her feet as a way of giving herself a powerful boost in speed, and Hiyasu activated a new spell after getting in front of Emiria. Emiria watched Hiyasu stretch her arms forward with her palms open while slightly getting down on her left knee.

"Azure Geyser Rain!" Hiyasu shouted fiercely while looking quite stern, before making her hands be aimed down at the river's water.

Lucy asked with a startled facial expression, as she saw this specific area of the river's water start to violently spin in a counterclockwise manner, "What's happening?!"

Emiria replied to her while looking quite arrogant, her lips forming a devious smirk, "You're about to find out."

In a few seconds, Lucy and Risa got to see a large geyser of water emerge from the water while frost was coming out of it instead of steam. That was perfect for Emiria, who sent much more Ice Magic into the Frost Orb that she had been holding for it to become a deep shade of light blue, and Emiria viewed this technique to be a Frigid Frost Orb. Emiria aggressively threw it at her sister's attack, resulting in the water-based attack gaining a tremendous boost in power, and Hiyasu's geyser now consisted of light blue water that had thin light blue beams coming out of it. When the geyser was struck by the seeds, it interestingly spun rapidly in the clockwise direction while shooting out light blue bubbles that were icy and certainly had cool properties.

When the bubbles struck the area of the ice garden that Lucy and Risa were in, the bubbles created light blue explosions while they left behind white clouds of frost. The frost was quite thick to where Lucy soon lost sight of her opponents, but the bubbles of ice were still coming down from the geyser. Lucy attempted to dodge them by sliding several feet back, prompting Risa to follow her movements, but Lucy's legs that had been moving fast from Kaze's Feather Dance began to be affected by the immense amount of frigidly cold air that Emiria and Hiyasu sent to the protagonists' side of the battlefield.

That prompted Risa to glance at Lucy's body, which was starting to become by white frost from how neither Wind Magic or Plant Magic protected her from coldness. Risa quickly activated Stellar Psi for the purpose of levitating some magenta flames that she faintly saw on the other side of the river, and Risa hastily pulled them towards her. Instead of fusing the flames together, Risa threw one flame up into the air right before activating the spell known as Extrasensory Psychic Soul Destruction. Risa fired a large sphere into the air, its outer rims being light pink while the rest of the sphere was in a regular hue of pink. The pink sphere had bubblegum pink beams swirling around it, and Risa watched her attack explode in a large pink blast as soon as it hit the stronger flame. The magenta flame was affected by the winds of the lower-level attack, which powered it up to grow into a larger magenta flame, and the flame levitated much higher into the air because of the aftereffect pertaining to Extrasensory Psychic Soul Destruction. The spell made the magenta flame move around in a circle, before it rapidly descended down to the ground while spinning counterclockwise.

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Risa's flame was gaining more power and speed as it spun rapidly, and the flame's heat waves grew more intense. They were heating up this section of the ice garden, melting frost off of the trees while the spinning breeze blew away the thick frost, and the snow also began to melt. The heat also made the antagonists' geyser of ice began to drip, drops of water sliding down the top of the structure, and that applied to other creations that were made from ice in this area. The sight of the distant ice stalagmite containing the teal-haired woman prompted Lucy to shakily point her fingers in that direction, an action that Risa foresaw, but Risa also foresaw a problem.

Emiria and Hiyasu made the icy bubbles come down to their own side of the field, but the two women grabbed several of the projectiles to crush them with their bare hands. That caused Emiria and Hiyasu to both be engulfed in a light blue aura, before sending some of that magic down into their feet, and the girls ran towards the Sabertooth mages at rapid speeds! They were both seemingly as fast as Lucy, which startled her for a moment, and Emiria quickly lunged at Lucy during the simple blink of an eye while Hiyasu lunged at Risa.

Risa distracted her by activating Stellar Psi at the last second, and the flame from earlier was brought down much faster to strike the ground with an immense amount of power. It exploded into a magenta-colored maelstrom, which gave off an intense amount of heat, and Risa hastily sent the twister of flames in Hiyasu's direction. Hiyasu quickly dodged the attack, which had actually been aimed towards the teal-haired woman who had been frozen in ice. When the maelstrom made contact with the ice and slammed into it, a large magenta blast of energy occurred! It assisted Risa with melting the ice down to just being water, the blast spinning outward while producing heat waves, and the remnants of the attack were several magenta flames that moved in a circle around the water puddles. As Risa watched the freed woman kindly give her a thankful smile, Risa felt like that new fusion spell could be called Magenta Maelstrom's Soul of Flaming Obliteration.

Risa turned her attention to Hiyasu lunging at her again, and Hiyasu made Water Magic engulf her left fist for the purpose of aggressively punching Risa in the face. Risa kept her eyes on Hiyasu to see her activating Azure Hydro, which involved the water-wielding wizard firing a large jet stream of water from her mouth, and the water had frost coming off of it. Hiyasu widened her eyes in shock from seeing Risa grab the nearby magenta flame from earlier with her left hand, before seeing Risa make Psychic Magic surround her right fist. Risa adapted to the situation by swinging her right fist upward to strike Hiyasu right below the chin, effectively closing her mouth, and Risa slammed the flame in her hand against Hiyasu's face!

"Good job, sis!" Lucy playfully told Risa with a happy smile on her face, as she was doing her best to dodge Emiria's punches that were infused with Ice Magic.

That prompted Emiria to respond with a concerned facial expression as she looked over at her younger sister, before shifting her focus back to Lucy, "Hiyasu, try to cool down your face with water! If you two punks wanna make this fight be more dangerous, I'll gladly ice down your chances of winning!"

"Ice Goddess' Frigid Wolf!" Emiria shouted fiercely, as she sent magical power down into her left hand.

Emiria used this spell to make the top half of her palm have large pale blue icicles emerging from it while the lower half of her palm also had large icicles coming from it, and the icicles formed the shape of a wolf's fangs. Emiria proceeded to try hitting Lucy with the attack in the form of a palm strike, only for it to be intercepted by one of the leaves that had been rotating around Lucy's waist. The leaf started to grow much larger from touching Emiria's spell, before absorbing its density to seem metallic when Lucy touched it, and Emiria looked astounded at how the icicles on her palm immediately started feeling like fragile glass.

Emiria watched the leaf become pale green powder that was in Lucy's hand, before she activated Forest's Verdant Energy Ball in that same hand for it to immediately absorb all of the powder, and that prompted Emiria to apply more Ice Magic to her feet. She started to move at incredibly high speeds while slyly sending her magic down into the ground, and Lucy watched the grassy terrain start to become encased in ice. Emiria made the situation now seem like everyone would be sliding around in an ice rink with no walls to hold on to, but Lucy made herself adapt to the circumstances.

She used Kaze's Feather Dance to make her feet move at a much faster pace, even though she wouldn't be as fast as Emiria. Lucy's opponent watched her start to slide around in a circle while starting at its bottom half on the ice, prompting Emiria to do the same on the other half of the circle. The girls seemed to be in a standoff while making their feet skate on the ice, waiting for the other to launch the next attack. Lucy simply kept her eyes on Emiria's location while noticing that her opponent didn't move at full speed, but the sight of Emiria no longer shielding an ice stalagmite from view made Lucy feel like this was the perfect opportunity to use the tactic of charging up the spell that had been in her hand.

"Forest's Verdant Energy Ball!" Lucy aggressively shouted, after sending a slight amount of Plant Magic into the sphere.

Emiria told Lucy with a rude grin on her face, as she slid to the right as a way of completely dodging the attack that went several feet into the ice garden, "You have some good spells, but they're useless if they can't hit me!"

That prompted Lucy to reply in a calm tone of voice, ignoring the sight of a massive pale green blast occurring in the background as she stretched out her palms to absorb the strong winds, "Well, that just adds another reason for this rivalry to be very intense."

After Hiyasu got up from kneeling to drench her face in the river, Risa added to Lucy's statement while having seriousness in her magenta eyes, "You're skilled rivals, since you're quick to adjust your strategies in countering our techniques."

The confidence of Lucy and Risa caused Emiria and Hiyasu to both assume that their newest opponents would fight them with some new techniques, but Risa and her teammate quickly slid on the ice while they were prepared to run into another section of the ice garden. They ran towards some distant ice stalagmites, getting prepared to keep carrying out this part of the strategy, and the two girls took a moment to simply smile at each other in a calm manner as they were running. Their strategy was working perfectly, and Lucy was also glad that Risa assisted her earlier by using heated winds to blow away the frost.

Speaking of the frost, Risa was glad that she could hear the sound of the ice geyser finally falling apart. That was an important part of Risa's task of using the high speed pertaining to her flames, since spinning hot flames and making them explode would generate heat waves that would lower the cold temperatures of icy weapons. Risa wanted to turn that turret gun geyser of ice into water that wouldn't be a solid object, and she could hear several chunks of ice falling into the water. They made the loud sounds of splashes, and Risa was glad about how a fusion spell such as that one would require some time for it to be set up.

That contrasted with the strategy used by Risa and Lucy, who interestingly stayed three feet apart from each other as they were running. and the girls glanced at the last two ice stalagmites that were near some aqua blue plants. Lucy had also used her third spell to change the terrain that the plants were on, temporarily warming it as a way to try subtly melting the ice from below the surface, and she felt like it would be a good idea to continue rapidly using spells. That seemed to confound Emiria and Hiyasu, who were both running after the girls with annoyed facial expressions, and Emiria was actually beginning to get irritated. Still, Lucy softly smiled as she had planned on making her attacks be the ones that would serve as a prominent nuisance to the enemies while Risa would have to fight more defensively today.

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-Lucy's flashback, after leaving the snowy clearing-

When Lucy left the snowy clearing with Risa, the green-haired wizard realized that the girls had to have their team be in the proper formation for responding to the enemies' attacks. If Risa was the person close enough to see Emiria and Hiyasu running towards them, then she could rapidly launch flames at the foes. Of course, the fiery attacks wouldn't necessarily be used for incinerating the two women. They would be more focused on dodging the hot flames, which meant that Risa's fire could be useful for warming up the ice garden in attempt to make the ice stalagmites melt.

The only downside to using flames and explosive spells pertained to the fact that the other icy plants in the ice garden's areas would either melt or defrost, which meant that they wouldn't thrive in a warm climate, but Lucy felt like the plants could be restored to their natural states at a later point in time. Lucy would gladly heal the plants with her Plant Magic, but that task was given a lower priority in comparison to freeing all of the hostages. Lucy clenched her fists tightly from thinking about the fact that innocent people were involved in this portion of the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour, and she felt angry that Emiria did this as part of making the spectacle be exciting.

Lucy decided that she would get payback by making this battle be thrilling while it was a race against time, not wanting the hostages to suffer from frostbite or have their hearts be frozen. Since this would be a race against time, acting very hastily was highly important. Lucy silently made the decision that she would activate Kaze's Feather Dance to greatly boost her own level of speed, but Lucy would primarily send the energy down into her legs as a way of giving Kaze's Feather Dance much more magical power. That would allow her to run at much more rapid levels of speed than before, and Lucy could use that to her advantage in helping Risa free hostages.

Freeing all of the ice garden's frozen patrons would require Lucy to also fire her spells at an extremely fast pace, but she wanted to do it in a clever way that would involve stealth. If Emiria and Hiyasu noticed that the girls were freeing hostages, then there was the possibility that Emiria could just make those individuals be encased in ice again. Lucy wouldn't want that to happen, and she decided that it would be good for her to just play along with the enemies' assumed perceptions that her attacks weren't able to hit them. In relation to this strategy, Lucy would be glad to see some of her attacks miss the mark with avoiding the rivals who weren't her main targets.

"Although, why do we need to run at this distance apart from each other before attacking the enemies?" Risa asked Lucy with a curious facial expression, noticing that their battle formation was already being displayed from how Lucy kept being ahead of her.

Lucy explained to her in a calm tone, speaking softly as she smiled with feelings of confidence in her eyes, "When you have to attack the enemies or attack an icy pillar, I'll say a signal word such as Psi and point in the direction of where to attack. Based on how you'll be positioned to swiftly react to the signal, you'll be capable of quickly hitting pillars of ice and responding to any of the enemy's attacks."

"Additionally, swiftly responding to the enemy's attacks or quickly striking the prisons of ice at high speeds will allow you to hit them with much more precision." Lucy explained further, thinking about the logical effects pertaining to the team's new style of fighting.

In relation to hitting enemies with much more precision, Lucy decided to clench her left hand into a fist while her right hand would remain as an open palm. Lucy's right hand would mainly be used for firing any attacks that came from her hands, and her left hand would be used for pointing Risa towards which direction to face for firing her spells. Therefore, Risa would need to always keep her eyes focused on Lucy's left hand. By doing that, she could be prepared for when Lucy would shout the signal word. Risa smiled nicely at how she silently used her magic to foresee visual images of Lucy's plan being carried out in later moments of time, giving her a clear picture of the instructions that would be followed.

However, a clear image of visual instructions wouldn't be possible for every single action that had to be carried out. Lucy thought about the fact that there was another important task that Risa would need to do for the team, and the task was something that Risa definitely excelled at. Lucy would want her friend to always have a very protective heart during this fight, since that strong amount of emotion was necessary for Risa to use her spells at their highest levels of power. By putting high amounts of emotion into her fire-based spells, Risa would make her attacks be strong enough to burn through the ice or burn her enemies.

As they kept running, Risa was definitely feeling strong emotions in her heart. She felt the immense desire to protect all of the innocent people who were being harmed by the ice, and Risa quietly told herself that she would even help Lucy protect Juvia. Even though the older woman had been rather defiant towards the group's attempt in looking out for her best interest and wellbeing, Risa didn't want to see any of the participants freeze to death after they had likely trained quite hard to be invited to the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour. The vivid image of Flare Corona being an ice statue had stayed in her mind like an extremely traumatic memory, and Risa wanted to be free from ever experiencing emotional trauma again.

"Lucy, we're going to protect everyone! After we save everyone, we'll smash Emiria's ice into pieces and pull Hiyasu down into the water!" Risa stated to Lucy with a serious facial expression, before her eyes displayed much more fierceness as the thought of the team defeating their enemies.

Lucy replied to Risa in a confident manner, feeling great about her own chance at a rematch, "In this fight, we'll have to fight in sync with each other like a skilled pair of sisters. Risa, you can try to take down Hiyasu later. As for me, Emiria and I have our own rivalry to settle."

"Show her that your abilities with Plant Magic aren't meant to be underestimated, Sis!" Risa playfully responded to Lucy in a confident tone, hoping the rematch would involve Lucy being victorious.

Lucy would definitely use her Plant Magic to a strong extent, and she would also have to rely on her Wind Magic. Lucy decided that she would also need to inhale winds that didn't contain any traces of Emiria's Ice Magic, since it would be great to increase the power of her own spells without experiencing stomach pains. Not letting herself get hit by Emiria's attacks was also an important aspect of this strategy, and the training that transpired on the previous day with Suzuna would assist Lucy with hopefully getting through this fight unscathed.

Although, Lucy would make sure that Emiria ended up with wounds on her body during this fight. She wanted that hustling girl to experience the pain that she dealt to innocent people, as well as making karma strike her for trying to get the Emerald Green Ring through an unfair fight. In one part of Lucy's mind, she did wonder if either Emiria or Hiyasu secretly had the next legendary ring in their possession. If they weren't going to disclose that information whilst being very arrogant, then Lucy felt like it was necessary to make those girls give her some important information after making them get humbled in this event.

From what Lucy recalled about the first day of the event, Emiria and Hiyasu did mention that they were willing to trade items with any wizards who had good trinkets of Holder Magic that they didn't need anymore. Based on that information, Lucy felt like she would definitely need to defeat these girls. They could've probably traded some good items for a ring that a mage deemed as a gaudy-looking accessory, which meant that there was at least a slim possibility of Lucy being right. As Lucy chose to stealthily hide in a nearby tree with Risa hiding behind her, she thought about how the possibility of her assumption being right would make Emiria truly be a formidable adversary and obstacle that she would have to overcome.

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Five minutes later, back in reality...

Emiria continued to run alongside Hiyasu, who decided to use an attack known as Bubble Stream Spring. Hiyasu surprised Lucy and Risa by jumping several feet in front of Emiria, and Hiyasu placed her arms in front of her chest to form an 'X'. Hiyasu's palms were open while she fired six large bubbles from them, and the bubbles quickly headed towards Emiria. That only prompted Emiria to stretch out her arms, and she activated a new spell that was simply called Snowflake Shield. Emiria watched the light blue aura engulf both of her hands while the ice on the trees began to send itself towards her, and Emiria simply absorbed the ice into her hands.

She fired it all back out into the air, the ice taking the form of six snowflakes that created a wide ice wall, and Emiria simply let Hiyasu's attack hit the barrier. When the bubbles hit Emiria's shield, they quickly ended up bursting into steaming torrential vortexes of water that would become encased in frigid vortexes of ice. The icy attacks were all surrounded in a light blue aura, gaining more density and much more speed as if Emiria wanted her attacks to be rivaling the power of Lucy's enhanced spells in a somewhat ridiculing manner, and Emiria was able to control the vortexes with the different fingers of her right hand.

Emiria merely flexed her index finger to send two of the vortexes down to the ground, making them explode in massive light blue blasts while they froze the grass and other plants in this area. That also applied to Lucy's remaining rotating leaves, which all had grown and acted as a wide barrier of shields when the outward-spinning blast was in range of freezing her to death. Lucy attempted to activate her third spell of Plant Magic by placing her hands against the ground that was being covered in ice, before starting to feel an immense amount of coldness numb her hands while the spell wouldn't activate.

Hiyasu's spell secretly had the aftereffect of making the bubbles become scalding hot at the very last second, even if their water would be encased in ice, and Hiyasu had been thinking about finding some way to impede Lucy from using that specific spell. If she could warm up the terrain and make the grass become green, then Hiyasu would overheat the terrain for two seconds before Emiria's ice would freeze the ground for a longer duration of time with glacial ice that was much denser than Emiria's previous spells. However, that didn't stop Lucy from touching a leaf shield that was only frozen halfway down. She made it become powder that fell down into her right hand, before activating Forest's Verdant Energy Ball for the chance to repeat her spell from earlier, and Lucy threw the sphere for it to predictably be blocked by one of Emiria's remaining vortexes.

The explosive energy from the collision made a massive pale green blast appear before a massive light blue explosion, and Lucy quietly gestured with two fingers for Risa to use another spell. Risa leapt to her right while deciding to activate Shadowy Psychic's Psychokinetic Magenta Scream with much more magical power in her attack, and she rapidly fired the spell into the dangerous battlefield. The spiraling beam of magenta flames became more powerful from Lucy's winds being mixed in with the icy frost and scalding steam, almost like the flames were gaining more heat than coldness, and Risa quietly raised her right hand to push her spell forward with Stellar Psi. The magenta blast was very enormous, breaking through the icy pillar and burning its remnants for the cold hostage to start running away, and the distant sound of ice breaking meant that Rogue and Sting were finished with destroying the last ice stalagmite. Even though that part of the battle was over and the next part could soon commence, Emiria and Hiyasu both started to get irritated towards a predictable element of their rivals' strategy.

"Are you two idiots planning to make this routine persist until nightfall?! Why don't you just stop and attack with a variety of all your spells, or even launch constant counterattacks if you punks want this to be an awesome fight?!" Emiria asked the Sabertooth mages with an agitated look on her face, ironically making herself seem like a hotheaded mage who wielded ice.

Hiyasu asked Risa in an astounded tone while looking aggravated and pointing at her, "Also, what's your issue with always rapidly using flames and barely hitting us?! If you're attacking too fast while you're moving, aren't you going to end up hitting nothing?!"

As Hiyasu was about to chase after the girls who proceeded to run away again, Emiria slightly calmed herself down and grabbed her sister by the back of the light blue coat to say in a calm manner, "Wait a moment, Hiyasu. Don't chase after them immediately anymore. In fact, let's build up our strength and utilize the fact that this little game of evasion can't go on forever."

Hiyasu replied softly with realization in her voice while turning to face her sister, looking neutral at how Emiria started wiping light blue powder off of her pale blue coat, "They're expending high quantities of magical power, sis. If they can't keep it up, their little routine will fall apart."

Hiyasu and Emiria decided to just run after their opponents with moderate levels of magical power applied to their feet, feeling like they could afford to behave somewhat leisurely as a way to confuse their opponents. The two women casually glanced at the area near an upcoming clearing, taking notice of how Aoiumi and Samui appeared to run away from it like they had been two patrons who just walked out of there. Since these mages were all in Cerulean Frost, Emiria merely went past the lower-ranked wizards with the vortexes in front of her while Hiyasu slightly bowed her head as a polite and short greeting.

She entered the clearing to be greeted by the sight of Risa, who made an Esper Ball form in her right hand while making her feet firmly stand on the icy half of the clearing that was in front of a lake with sparkling blue water. The lake had flowerbeds of icy plants resting in the icy blue soil beyond the clearing's midpoint, and the aroma of flowers was smelled by everyone as the breeze gently blew. Emiria decided that she wouldn't be gentle towards the girl who had mainly been creating infernos in the icy tourist attraction, however, and she was ready to fight the duo with the full power of every spell in her arsenal.

However, Emiria started to look suspicious while Hiyasu's eyes displayed curiosity about why Lucy wasn't next to Risa. The mage's sudden absence started to make Emiria look slightly smug at the thought of Lucy running away to officially let Risa battle Hiyasu on her own in this event, and looking past the lake allowed Emiria to see Lucy walking towards the exit. Although, Emiria looked closer to see Lucy carrying a blue-haired lady who had been shivering from being trapped in the ice. As that woman who had her shoulder-length navy blue hair in a wavy style kept shivering and clutching her navy blue lab coat for researching winter botany, Lucy kept walking and didn't stop at the sight of the teal-haired woman from earlier defrosting Juvia at a slow rate with her own Water Magic after presumably stopping to pick up her ice sculpture before encountering Samui. Without needing to really see Samui as a piece of this problem, Emiria widened her eyes in absolute shock and disbelief.

"Kotomi's carrying that girl? Isn't that the girl I encased in ice earlier? She was frozen by my strong Ice Magic, but how did she get freed?" Emiria asked aloud to herself, her eyes refusing to believe what she was witnessing.

Upon nearly going out of the clearing and just glancing at the ice garden to see frost around several large fragments of ice being either nearby or distant, Emiria continued speaking in disbelief "All those hostages... They've all escaped! That's impossible, especially since that glacial ice is too difficult to break from the inside!"

Emiria gasped softly as she thought to herself in a question with the immense feeling of realization entering her eyes, seeming too angry to speak her next words aloud because of her complaints now sounding as idiotic as Hiyasu's rant when viewing the situation with hindsight, "During this fight, several of the spells that we dodged weren't even intended to be aimed at us?!"

That only made Emiria feel like she needed to be much more coldhearted in this fight, as her eyes displayed a chilling sense of furiousness. Emiria started to charge up a high amount of magical power, and she intended to make Lucy become frozen in ice. Emiria felt like that would be the perfect punishment for someone who didn't seem to be taking this rematch seriously, especially since the hostess didn't want any of the invitees trying to upstage her or outshine her in any way. In Emiria's mind, Lucy attempted to upstage her like an amateurish ice skater ruining a professional's magnificent and dramatic performance.

"Are you viewing me as some kind of idiot, you bitch?! You really think I'll just let you make me look like a dumbass?!" Emiria angrily asked Lucy while preparing to unleash Ice Goddess' Bellow with more power.

Hiyasu added with an extremely vindictive and displeased look on her face, before using a familiar attack "If you're gonna treat us like we're fools, then it's majorly insulting! Azure Geyser Rain!"

That prompted Risa to aim her left hand at the geyser while using Stellar Psi to simply keep it stuck in place, before replying to the women with a confident smile on her face, "Well, we didn't have to try very hard with riling you up! I won't let you go after my teammate!"

Risa explained to Emiria and Hiyasu in a strong-willed manner, confidence in her eyes as her Psychic Magic maintained a strong grip on the geyser, "Kotomi wished for me to help her rescue all of the innocent people who you dragged into this fight, and they don't need to be involved with a battle that doesn't concern them! After also seeing what you've done to other mages and even made people be slaves in Seigan Town, I'm going to let the strength of my magic display my immense desire to protect everyone!"

After expressing the feeling of confusion on her face at the last part of the list of things that Risa was holding them accountable for, Hiyasu aimed her right hand at the geyser of water to send more magical power into it. However, that only made Risa send more power into Stellar Psi and she refused to let the geyser get anywhere near her best friend. Risa would continue to keep Hiyasu's spell restrained, even after Lucy managed to reach the exit with the last person who needed to be rescued from this area of the ice garden.

She soon heard Lucy's feet step on to the tiled floor that was right in front of the exit's doorway, which caused Risa to smile with much more confidence. She simply grinned at Hiyasu with excitement, feeling glad that Lucy would return soon with her remaining magical power being used to defeat Emiria in their rematch. Emiria unleashed Ice Goddess' Bellow in an attempt to make Risa be out of the way, since she wanted to go after Lucy and finish this fight. However, Risa blocked the attack by throwing the Esper Ball in her right hand while a magenta sphere began to surround that hand to signify Risa using Gleaming Magenta Psi Aurora. Risa actually used this spell at a weaker amount of power, as the Esper Ball created an average-sized pink blast that attempted to levitate Emiria's heavy spell in midair, and the magenta sphere ended up bursting into waves of Psychic Magic! Even if Emiria's attack was still intact and spinning after colliding with the Esper Ball, Risa's psychic waves ended up striking the spell and creating magenta-colored explosions that ultimately destroyed it. As Risa felt glad about she was doing well against Hiyasu and Emiria on this day where she wanted to finally have her chance to fight the hostesses for the first time, she hoped that Lucy's part of their teamwork was successful.

---

Concurrently, in front of Seigan Town's ice garden...

Lucy was outside of the dome-shaped building while being down on her knees to just let the shivering woman rest on the street, and almost all of Sabertooth's team members were standing by her side. Kusabue and Yukino were glad that the group also stood with several of the people who were either escorted towards the exits or ran away after being defrosted, and Kūkiatsu was also pleased to see Juvia be out of the ice garden. Although, she was still in the form of an ice statue that needed more time to thaw out and the teal-haired woman who attempted to defrost her had focused on applying spells of scalding hot water to all of the statue's weak points resembling cracks in armor.

The woman took a moment to look at all of the other patrons in the ice garden, noticing that no one was losing any limbs from frostbite, and some people seemed to primarily suffer from having the frost make their hair be colored white or light blue while they rubbed the ice prisons' frost off of their bodies. She found herself having to make her own body no longer be coated in the cold frost, but the woman glanced around to see that she couldn't thank the person who used pink flames to specifically free her from the ice. That caused her to look at Lucy, who she recalled to currently have her be magic in shades of green.

She hadn't encountered Lucy at any point prior to today, not even reading the newspapers to hear anything about her, and this woman who looked like a fashion model had been named Kaitōtīru Mintochaya. She was one of the women who had been in Seigan Town's show for the winter fashion collection that took place as an event unrelated to the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour, and the sight of the green-haired wizard looking very confident really seemed inspiring to this woman who had also been a mage. In fact, she needed to thank this invitee of the hostesses' event in a good way.

However, Lucy wasted no time with staying around for any casual chats. Lucy started to glance over at the nearest exit that would now have the purpose of being an entrance into the clearing, and the thought of Risa being left alone in there with the enemies only made her activate Kaze's Feather Dance again. As the mint green wings fell down to her feet, Lucy inhaled more of the town's cold winds. She sent the Wind Magic into her legs, before doing some basic stretches, and Lucy ran as fast as possible to get back to Risa. That left Kaitōtīru with the other Sabertooth mages, as well as the other people who were free from harm. Although, not everyone desired to just stay outside.

"W-we n-need t-t-to g-go b-back in there, or the plants w-will all get ravaged. S-Some of those are very r-rare to only grow h-here, and others had to adapt f-from warmer climates for months." The shivering woman stated sternly to everyone else, not minding the coldness of her chattering teeth as she was feeling very enraged at everything she had initially seen when the ice stalagmites and blasts were freezing people such as herself.

That caused Kūkiatsu to reply to her in a stern tone, caring for the woman's safety, "No, you should just leave this situation to Risa and Kotomi. They're very powerful mages, and we shouldn't get in their way."

"Even if they're fighting Lady Emiria and Lady Hiyasu, those mages may not stand a chance against their skills when they're very serious enough to create rainstorms or blizzards. Besides, something about Lady Emiria's magic just feels... strange. Even as an Ice God Slayer, the god slayers aren't usually utilizing strength at such a formidable level." Kaitōtīru silently thought to herself, as her facial expression started to look somewhat grim.

She walked away from everyone else for a moment to think about how Emiria and Hiyasu had both become very strong in nearly seven months, which was less than a year, and not even the best mages below S-Class in Cerulean Frost could even defeat them. Emiria's level of skill ascended to such a high tier, which meant that Kaitōtīru's skills with defrosting ice were probably going to be useless, but Kaitōtīru wondered how Emiria even obtained that immense amount of power. No one ever asked Emiria about the specific reason for her strength rapidly increasing, as they merely assumed that she and Hiyasu had trained extremely hard in the icy tundra.

Kaitōtīru glanced towards the other side of town, which featured the road that led into the icy tundra, and she remembered how the first day of the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour involved a few of the invited mages going out there in an attempt to look for items of Ice Magic that could be traded to Emiria. After bragging about how her first victory had been against a girl named Kotomi Takeuchi, Emiria had increased the requirements of her bartering system. If anyone traded six of the white rhombus-shaped stones of diamond dust to Emiria and didn't need that Ice Magic, she was allegedly giving out powerful Ice Stones in exchange.

Ice Stones could only be found after the most dangerous blizzards passed through Seigan Town, which hadn't happened in the week before the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour, but any blizzards or snowstorms of any mildness or severity would leave behind several diamond dust stones that could be found. Those stones each contained half of the magical energy in an Ice Stone, which could absorb all of the energy in those stones. Still, the fact that Emiria even accepted those small stones to exchange them for counterfeit Ice Stones that she was crafting from her own magic only made Kaitōtīru look extremely miffed while Samui and Aoiumi came outside of the ice garden from a different nearby entrance.

"Out of all the dishonest things that those hustlers could do, this must be one of the most unfair situations that benefits them during a festival!" Kaitōtīru stated aloud to herself with a displeased look on her face, as she expanded the scale on how Emiria and Hiyasu weren't entirely fighting fairly against all of their competitors.

Samui asked Kaitōtīru with a curious look on her face, as she and Aoiumi walked up to the fashion model, "Kaitōtīru, are you talking about Lady Emiria and Lady Hiyasu fighting against our newest friends in the ice garden?"

"If they're you're newest friends, then you should probably tell them to forfeit that battle. The leaders of Cerulean Frost have enhanced their magic, and I'm very sure that Emiria used an Ice Stone to gain more power! As for Hiyasu, she probably has a stone that boosts the power of Water Magic." Kaitōtīru explained to the two women with a concerned facial expression, as she was ready to run towards the ice garden with them.

However, Aoiumi only had a smile of assurance on her face from hearing Kaitōtīru be worried about the rescuers' safety. Aoiumi believed that Kotomi and Risa could win their respective battles against Emiria and Hiyasu. Kotomi herself had already proven to Aoiumi that she could take down any person who intended to cause trouble in Seigan Town, and trusting her friend meant that Aoiumi needed to believe in Kotomi's level of strength. She definitely did have faith in Kotomi, as her smile for assuring Kaitōtīru about Kotomi's victory didn't even slightly waver.

Samui simply smiled while closing her eyes and calmly putting her left hand on Kaitōtīru's left shoulder, and she also believed that her newest allies would be fine in the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour. Based on visual memory of seeing Emiria's battles during the previous evening, killing anyone was illegal. However, Samui did believe that it would still be good for the three of them to stay near the specific exit that contained the clearing with a lake. That was actually the exit that the shivering botanist was now walking towards, prioritizing the safety of the remaining plants above her own life, and Samui took notice of her actions. She quickly ran over to the woman while Kaitōtīru and Aoiumi followed her, and Samui didn't want the woman to act recklessly.

As the employee of the ice garden stared at Samui's periwinkle blue eyes with the feeling of determination in her own navy blue eyes, Samui watched the woman collapse with her body falling forward. The botanist collapsed from exhaustion, and nearly being the last person who was freed from the ice stalagmites meant that her body was too numb for it to move easily. On top of that issue, her wounds appeared to be covered in frost with her skin starting to look blue from frostbite. Samui would gladly check the ice garden for the plants that were remedies to these problems, but she decided that it would be wise for her to also be the person who went back to the ice garden in place of the researcher. After all, Samui herself had worked as a researcher on plants before and she wouldn't mind trying to keep them safe. Plus, Samui started to smile at how this situation gave her another reason to check on the wellbeing of Kotomi and Risa if they needed her assistance.

---

Back at the icy and snowy clearing...

Risa found herself having to put a high amount of power into the Stellar Psi spell, since Hiyasu used a few seconds of time to activate the Azure Geyser Rain spell again. She purposely made the second geyser merge with the first one, which made its power and size be doubled. Emiria still looked upset at the fact that Lucy played her for a fool, and she tightly clenched her fists at the sight of the Sabertooth mage running in through the doorway to return to the battlefield. Upon locking eyes with Emiria, Lucy quietly activated Kaze's Feather Dance again and sent more Wind Magic into her legs.

She wasted no time with rushing to Risa's side, and Lucy felt glad that her friend was still here to bring an end to the first phase of the frosty fight that was taking place in the blue gardens of ice and snow. Lucy glanced back at the snow for a moment to see that no one else was going to show up, which meant that she and Risa could now move on to the second phase of this fight between teams. The girls could now take down their rivals, who were expressing different reactions to this part of the fight. Hiyasu remained calm while Emiria changed her upset facial expression into a sudden smirk from seeing Lucy use more magical power, and Lucy began to look very ambitious about beating these overconfident foes.

"Now that we're finished with saving the hostages, all that's left to do is take down these mages who can't fight fair!" Lucy stated aloud while the feeling of confidence remained in her eyes, ready to change her strategy.

Emiria responded in a somewhat smug manner, briefly closing her eyes as she smiled, "Go ahead and try to take us down. We've been waiting all day for this, so we'll let you launch the next attack."

"First spell of Wind Magic, I call upon thee! Wind Altitude Aerial Burst!" Lucy shouted with determination in her voice, as her hands formed the shape of a mouth.

Lucy asked in a perplexed manner, her eyes widening in shock at how the spell had the tiny energy of a small zephyr, "What's going on?! What happened to the spell?!"

Upon seeing Lucy's attack fizzle out very quickly, Emiria couldn't restrain herself from chuckling in a very sadistic manner. Hiyasu mimicked thataction, before both of the women laughed hysterically. Emiria couldn't even restrain herself from laughing for an entire minute at how Lucy's strategy was now having something go wrong, especially since Emiria perceived the issue to be very amateurish. There was an important piece of information regarding spells that were casted with emotion infused into the magical power, and Emiria decided to demonstrate that information right now.

She flexed her middle finger, before flexing her ring finger, and Emiria sent two of her icy vortexes towards Lucy at rapid speeds. The first icy vortex struck Lucy's body with a high amount of power, causing her to scream in pain while a massive light blue blast occurred, and Lucy was sent flying into the air! She felt the scalding hot water of the aftereffect start to occur, causing her to scream as if someone had drenched her with water that had been boiling. The second vortex went upward in a curved trajectory to strike Lucy from below while she couldn't change direction in midair with the frigid frost restraining the movement of her feet, and another massive blue blast of energy occurred. Lucy coughed up some blood from experiencing the strength of this fusion spell, and some of the wounds on her body were bleeding as she thought the attacks were piercing through her skin. Although, Emiria slightly restrained herself from using the spell at its highest level of power.

Still, that didn't stop Lucy from screaming in more pain from the burning sensations and from feeling the second blast's coldness seem like it was freezing her body. She couldn't move her legs at all, unable to even move her arms or lift a finger, and Lucy even started to feel the cold frost start to be in her hair for it to turn white like ice. The ice didn't impale her while she appeared to be suspended in the top part of the ice pillar where she was stuck, but Lucy could only view Emiria and Hiyasu by having her head raised above a hole that was part of the incomplete ice pillar. She started to quickly feel the blood rushing to her head, almost like the unfrozen part of her body was trying to retain some warm blood instead of feeling the rest of Lucy's bloodstream and body be as cold as glacial ice. As Lucy screamed in excruciating pain from the attacks and felt the ice's scalding drops of water start to strongly burn various parts of her body, her ears got to hear Emiria laughing in an arrogant manner before clearing her throat.

"Don't be so surprised that I was able to freeze the progress of your little plan, moron. No matter how strong you are as a mage, the limit to your spells isn't bottomless! Magical power depletes with every single time you use strong spells or weak spells, and it can drain faster if you're fusing magical power with the emotions from your heart!" Emiria explained to Lucy with a cocky smile on her face, as she arrogantly spoke in a ridiculing tone.

Lucy thought to herself in a frustrated manner, as she and Risa both looked very surprised, "That can't be..! I hate Emiria Hidenka for what she did to those innocent people!"

Emiria asked Lucy with a taunting facial expression, before grinning as she counted numbers on her fingers, "What's with that face, Kotomi Takeuchi? In your head, you hate me? Although, isn't that different from how all those deep feelings of anger in your heart are meager now? You used your spells at least... more than ten times without giving yourself much time to rest, so you must've been very angry. Meanwhile, I've used my spells by themselves and in fusions while that number totals up to just using spells five times. Although, I rested to conserve and restore the great power within one of my favorite items."

The antagonist explained further, as she used one hand to pull out a light blue stone from her coat's left pocket, "In fact, my powerful Ice Stone allows me to use spells of Ice Magic up to ten times without restraining myself. If I restrain my power, that number would increase to fifteen. As for fusion spells, I can use them up to nine times a day without . Of course, these stats are all existing before the eventual day of me gaining much more power."

Emiria's level of experience didn't matter to Risa, who activated the spell called Psychic Magenta's Hexing Flames. She felt like it was necessary to take her focus off of the geyser for a moment, as saving her teammate was much more important in this moment, but Emiria chose to counter Risa's spiraling beam of flames. She crossed her pinky finger over her thumb, causing the two vortexes to merge into one larger attack, and Emiria sent the attack towards Risa's fire. The light blue blast was quite massive, its power being strong enough to create icy winds that instantly froze several of the gardens plants, and the Ice Magic had an extremely dangerous effect.

Whenever the winds touched the ice pillar that had trapped Lucy's body, the Ice Magic within the wind had made the pillar become denser to where the glacial ice started to compress Lucy's body. She coughed up some more blood while also feeling the ice start to curve around her body, the ice slowly creeping upward. Lucy soon saw the ice gain light blue spikes that protruded outward, and these spikes represented Emiria's spell becoming like tempered steel. Risa wouldn't be able to break through them unless her flames were hot enough, but Emiria refused to even let her think of a plan.

She motioned for Hiyasu to stop building up power into the geyser that needed to be sent towards the enemy, and Hiyasu lifted her right hand upward for the geyser to rise out of the lake. She moved her hand around in a circle at rapid speeds to make the geyser gain more power and speed, before sending it down on to Risa! When the geyser hit the pink-haired girl, she screamed in tremendous pain from how it created an azure blue explosion! Hiyasu's Water Magic was strong, even to the point where its bursting waves of water were powered up by Emiria's newly-created ice on the ground. The waves were colder than normal as they rapidly slammed against Risa with immense amounts of strength. Those waves dealt nine powerful blows to Risa's body, causing her to be very bruised and bloodied while the azure blue smoke blew through the air. The battle's loud noise and thick clouds of smoke were both very prominent right now, as they concealed sound and the wizards. When the smoke fully cleared up, Lucy unfortunately had to see her friend fall to the ground and appear to be unconscious. If that wasn't bad enough, her flames were earlier were now frozen and in a light blue color.

"That's one more mage taken down by one of the strongest mages in Cerulean Frost! The winner is-" Hiyasu arrogantly stated in a rude manner, before a certain mage loudly interrupted her.

Lucy shouted in an alarmed manner, as she saw several blue bruises appearing on Risa's body, "Risa, get up! Don't die here, Risa! Don't lose your fight in this event!"

"Well, that just leaves me to finish our little rematch!" Emiria stated in a sadistic tone of voice with a cruel smirk on her face, as she sent more magical power into the Ice Stone and aimed all of her fingers at the ice pillar to strengthen and temper its iciness.

As the ice pillar continued to compress Lucy's body and become stronger to the ice rose above her head to start freezing it, Emiria cruelly and coldly asked during Lucy's panicked screaming, "What do you think will happen first, Kotomi? Will your bones shatter from frostbite, will your limbs break, or will you faint from the sheer cold?"

Emiria sent much more magical power into her left hand, hoping to see or hear the result in the next few seconds. She and Hiyasu ignored the sight of Risa slightly raising her head up from the ground, and both of the hostesses glanced at Lucy. Tears were starting to come from her eyes, as she had believed that the previous few seconds were her last moments of life, but she didn't even do anything to stop Emiria's attack. Much to Emiria's surprise, the Ice Stone that she cherished so much for using high levels of magical power had ironically been missing from the left palm that was carelessly exposed.

She turned around to see Samui, who looked very stern towards how Emiria was intending to harm one of her friends. Also, Samui frowned with absolute disapproval in her eyes at how Emiria was willing to break one of the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour's rules. Whether it was the challenger or the hostess, killing a wizard was not permitted. Samui could proudly follow the rules of fashion modeling on the runway, which was an event completely outside of what Emiria and Hiyasu were managing, and viewing the situation from a celebrity's perspective made the beautiful mage feel like the managers were just as accountable as employees when rules weren't followed.

In regards to magic, a rule pertaining to Holder Magic was that it couldn't work if the user wasn't currently holding the necessary item. Since Emiria no longer held the Ice Stone in her hand, all of the ice that she created in the ice garden was going to lose its high amount of density. The ice would return to possessing the durability of medium-level Ice Magic that was used for the plants, which meant that some of Emiria's ice would easily melt from encountering flames or be easier to break. That also applied to the ice that had been binding Lucy, which lost its immense amount of density, and Lucy looked quite shocked to see a certain teal-haired woman absorbing the Ice Magic as her way of quickly defrosting the ice pillar.

"You?! What are you doing here?!" Lucy asked Kaitōtīru with a concerned facial expression, as she slid down to ground through the quickly-melting ice pillar.

Kaitōtīru replied with a confident smile on her face, eager to help Lucy be thawed out of the ice, "Miss, don't be so surprised that someone came back to express their gratitude! There's no way that one of Seigan's A-list fashion models could simply run away after being saved by a random mage!"

Upon turning her attention to where Samui stood, Lucy shouted while looking worried, "Samui, behind you!"

Hiyasu had quickly gotten behind Samui to jump up, before snatching the stone with one hand and delivering a powerful kick to her back. Samui was sent rolling several feet towards Lucy and Kaitōtīru, who watched her slowly stand up and wipe some water off of her face. The two women saw Samui look determined about getting that Ice Stone out of Emiria's hands, as she wanted to make another attempt at retrieving the item from the antagonists for everyone to just give themselves some time to wait for Risa to get up. If the hostesses weren't going to make this fight be fair, then Samui would want it to be very fair.

Without the Ice Stone, Emiria's Ice God Slayer Magic would be at only half of that high level. Samui assumed that Hiyasu was also using a stone, prompting her to try lunging towards the hostess who put the stone back in Emiria's coat pocket, but everybody stopped moving when they saw the sight of Risa standing back up. She calmly healed herself, which was an action signified by the magenta pink aura engulfing her body, but Risa's hair and eyes soon shifted to being in a different shade of pink. In fact, this shade of pink was one that gave Lucy some feelings of anxiety.

Risa's hair and eyes were starting to be in the shade of dark magenta, which was displayed by that aura surrounding her body, and Risa had her hair over her eyes. She moved her hair aside for a moment to angrily glare at Hiyasu and Emiria, who were both startled at how Risa seemed to have the intention of killing them for almost killing Lucy. Turning around to see Lucy be free was something that quickly brought Risa back to her senses, however, and she did her best to suppress her rage while maintaining this high level of magic. She turned back around while white clouds of steam emerged from her wounds that were healing, and Risa stared directly at Hiyasu.

"Hiyasu, there's no way that I'm gonna lose to you! Lucy, make sure you don't lose to Emiria!" Risa stated to the water-wielding woman with determination in her voice, before looking at Lucy in a serious manner.

Lucy walked up to Risa and stood beside her to just let Risa heal her wounds with Psychic Magic, before replying in a confident tone "I definitely won't lose to Emiria, especially after seeing how this rivalry has to end with us fighting at full strength! Risa, let's show these sisters which guild has the stronger pair of mages!"

"I'll be the winner of this battle, Risa Ryusei!" Hiyasu told Risa with a serious facial expression, as something about her words made Samui softly gasp with a feeling of realization.

Emiria stated to Lucy with a somewhat relaxed look on her face, not minding the dark magenta aura healing her opponent's injuries, "Since they won't make much of a difference, use whatever pathetic spells are in your arsenal."

---

That only prompted Lucy to smile confidently, feeling very courageous about the team's chances of winning, and she unleashed Wind Altitude Aerial Burst at full power. Lucy made her hands form the shape of a fanged mouth, before swinging her arms in a curved trajectory towards Emiria, and Lucy fired the emerald green winds at her opponent! The rapid speed of the spell allowed an emerald green blast to quickly occur, before Lucy made the unorthodox move of spinning around at fast speeds on one foot. Lucy's level of speed from Kaze's Feather Dance repelled the winds of the blast while the winds already surrounding her had provided her with a small boost of speed, and she felt herself start to be faster.

That didn't matter to Emiria, who unleashed Ice Goddess' Bellow as her next attack. She fired the pale blue beam of Ice Magic from her mouth while aiming the attack at Lucy, and the pale blue explosion made a strong gust of icy wind blow through the clearing! The smoke started fading away to reveal that Lucy used her high speed to slide several feet away from the blast, before spinning again like a ballet dancer, and repelling the icy winds also made Emiria be subjected to the experience of being unable to eat winds that contained her own magic. She found herself having to quickly spit them out, which gave Lucy enough seconds of time to strike her in the chest with the second spell known as Zephyr Punch. Right before striking Emiria with the spell, Lucy had made an emerald green aura engulf her fist. She also exhaled some breaths of air down on to it, increasing its Wind Magic, and Lucy looked confident as she hit Emiria with an intense burst of Wind Magic that was concentrated into the center of her fist.

The impact of Lucy's strong and swift punch sent Emiria flying backwards for her out of the clearing, making her be in the ice garden again. That didn't stop her from quickly getting up to activate Snowflake Shield. Emiria watched the light blue aura engulf both of her hands while the melting ice from earlier began to send itself towards her, and Emiria simply absorbed the ice into her hands. She fired it all back out into the air for the ice to once again form six snowflakes that created a wide ice wall, and Emiria created the Frost Orb in her right hand. She threw the orb at the icy barrier, causing it to have a frostier appearance while it shined in a light blue color, and the sound of Lucy dashing towards her prompted Emiria to fire the projectile at her opponent.

Lucy responded to Emiria's attack by spinning around quickly again as she simultaneously activated Kaze's Feather Dance, and she generated heavy winds that repelled the enhanced Frost Orb. It ended up being blown backwards, before detonating when it hit the ice. Emiria's projectile created a light blue blast that was massive while its abilities caused the ground to become frozen over by a thick sheet of ice, and the ice provided minimal traction for anyone walking on it. That didn't stop Lucy from running on to the ice, before jumping up from her right foot multiple times to propel herself up several feet in the air, and Lucy quickly descended to the ground to land on her left foot mere seconds before rapidly rotating counterclockwise on the ice like she was performing a Lutz as an ice skater.

"Why in the world does she keep spinning around after my attacks explode?!" Emiria thought to herself with a very confused look on her face, as she saw the blast's winds going into the faster-moving airstream of Lucy's rotation.

Lucy told Emiria with a fierce look on her face from thinking about the previous match, as she started skating towards her at fast speeds, "Hey, Emiria! Let's see who can skate around better on the ice during a close-combat situation!"

That caused Emiria to sternly respond while looking irritated at the level of speed that Lucy perceived as superior with Wind Magic, "You can move around all you want, but I'll reiterate that you aren't faster than me!"

As Lucy quickly approached her, Emiria slyly smirked and applied Ice Magic to her feet. That allowed her to rapidly skate around on the ice while creating another Frost Orb in her right hand, but Emiria created a second Frost Orb in that same hand before making them slightly touch as a way to merge the orbs into a larger attack. Emiria quickly threw the large orb at her Snowflake Shield spell, but she sent more magical power into the shield for it to not send the attack flying just yet. Emiria waited for Lucy to get a few inches closer to her, before letting the icy orb be propelled off of the shield in the form of light blue spinning bullets of ice that resembled the bullets from a turret gun while they were coated with frosty air!

Some of the bullets struck the spot where Lucy had been skating, but Emiria noticed that the massive light blue blasts ended up occurring around her instead of freezing her! Lucy's body became covered in some frost instead of ice, and she remained confident after seeing how she hadn't taken the full brunt of Emiria's power from that direct attack. That was due to the winds around her behaving like a shield, and making a shield of Wind Magic was Lucy's way of utilizing Suzuna's advice regarding how to rely on fighting in a defensive manner. Not only did a strong shield of Wind Magic lessen the impact of an attack against Lucy, but spinning rapidly to create the shield's airstreams of Wind Magic allowed Lucy to gather up slower currents of winds from blasts to make their energy be absorbed into the faster-moving currents. By absorbing those winds, Lucy's shield of air would get much stronger.

Since her defensive skills were proving to be useful for reducing the amount of damage that would be taken from Emiria's attacks, Lucy proceeded to use her third spell of Wind Magic. That spell was Tempest Tornado Bounce, which made Lucy swiftly shoot out five emerald green tornadoes from her left hand. The tornadoes rapidly circled around Emiria to take in more wind, before they bounced quite high to nearly touch the ice garden's ceiling, and the tornadoes quickly descended down absorb more wind. They detonated around Emiria to create emerald green blasts that were quite large, but Emiria used magical power to make a high amount of Ice Magic surround herself at the last moment before detonation. The Ice Magic made her be surrounded by a light blue aura, before she made a pale blue aura also engulf her body, and Emiria was going to keep fighting at a very serious level.

"If you think that you're the only wizard who can create durable shields, then you're foolish to underestimate me!" Emiria stated to Lucy with a smug facial expression, as the smoke cleared up to reveal that she was hardly injured from Lucy's attack.

That prompted Lucy to counter Emiria's words by replying in an optimistic tone, having the feeling of confidence in her eyes, "If you think that you're the only one with expertise on making fusion spells, then you're dumb to be underestimating me!"

"Tempest Emerald Wind Punch!" Lucy shouted fiercely while firing five more emerald green tornadoes from her left hand, before making an emerald green aura engulf her right fist.

Lucy quickly made her right fist punch of all the tornadoes, causing it to absorb them while the aura grew to be at five times its original size. All of that power allowed Lucy to bounce up into the air like her tornadoes would, and Lucy started to propel herself through the air with the energy that still remained from using Kaze's Feather Dance earlier. Lucy ascended several feet higher into the sky, and staring down directly at Emiria made Lucy start to smile in a clever manner. She spun rapidly right before aggressively punching the air downward five times, sending her Wind Magic into the ice garden's air current that would now blow down to the ground, and Lucy put some more energy into her fifth strike against the air.

Emiria instantly felt the heavy wind blowing down towards her, but she couldn't effectively counter the initial large burst of Wind Magic with Ice Goddess' Bellow. Emiria could only slow down the large burst of wind, which exploded in an emerald green blast that spun inwards when it hit the ground. Emiria felt the power of the blast from how its winds felt like spiraling punches against her body, causing her to groan from being caught in this explosion. The explosion created more winds that the next attack absorbed, powering it up to where its blast was massive. Emiria screamed in pain from that attack, which felt much stronger than the previous blast while its winds gave more power to the remaining attacks, and Emiria was soon caught in a five-layer attack of emerald green blasts! She was thrown around helplessly by the heavy winds that were also attacking their body with immense air pressure that felt like punches from titanium fists, and Emiria became very bruised from Lucy's fusion spell.

The emerald green smoke quickly cleared up to reveal that Emiria's winter coat and pants were torn by the blasts while some blood lightly dripped from her wounds, and she angrily glared at Lucy for striking her with such powerful attacks. Emiria vengefully activated the spell called Blizzard's Icy Winds, causing her to fire a massive light blue beam of Ice Magic from her mouth, and Emiria followed it up with Ice Goddess' Homing Glace. That spell required Emiria to make her hands form two large circles in front of her mouth, and Emiria fired a copious amount of hexagonal ice shards from her mouth. They quickly reached the beam to absorb its energy, before gaining more power and heading towards Lucy. She tried spinning on one foot to repeal the projectiles with rapid winds, but that only made some of them fall to the ground and create massive light blue blasts! Lucy screamed in pain from how the attacks pushed through her air shield, and she felt Emiria's ice shards hit her with tremendous amounts of power.

"How do you like Ice Goddess' Homing Blizzard? Isn't it as fearsome as a winter storm?!" Emiria asked Lucy with a sadistic facial expression, grinning as she heard the ice of her spell moving to repair the broken ground that had been damaged from the previous explosions.

Lucy responded in a pained manner while the smoke cleared up, being bruised and bloodied, "My feet! I... I can't... move!"

Emiria replied calmly from seeing the frigid ice coat Lucy's body in a similar manner to what Juvia had experienced, "Well, that just means you're an immobilized target and you'll be defeated in a few minutes. Maybe you should just forfeit, if you're not interested in becoming an ice statue."

Lucy looked frustrated while struggling to free herself from the extremely cold ice, feeling it expand on her body to start freezing her arms and legs. She could barely lift a finger or even move her feet, and Lucy briefly wondered how someone like Kotomi Takeuchi would get out of this situation. She soon widened her eyes with a look of realization, and Lucy used magical power to activate her fourth spell of Wind Magic. This spell was Emerald Falling Birds, which normally required Lucy to fire a large tornado from her mouth while aiming upwards. However, she aimed her head down at her feet right before firing the spell.

The large tornado quickly struck the ground and exploded, propelling Lucy high up into the air while the ice on her body started cracking apart. The tornado's emerald green explosion left behind several emerald green pigeons that were made of wind, and they all flew up towards Lucy. The pigeons crashed into her body for the purpose of creating several emerald green blasts that were quite large, and their power had increased from taking in the heavy winds pertaining to Emiria's most recent spell. Emiria watched the blasts occur in midair, which shifted her attention away from all the ice chunks falling to the ground, but all the billowing clouds of emerald green smoke prevented her from seeing if Lucy was still alive after getting struck by her own spell.

To Emiria's surprise, Lucy was still alive. She may have been more bruised and bloodied, but Lucy was still willing to fight her. Emiria watched Lucy activate Kaze's Feather Dance in midair, before spinning at extremely high speeds to make a strong amount of wind encircle her, and Lucy also sent Wind Magic down into her legs. She started to jump around in the air as if she was propelling herself off of a springboard, and inhaling more wind allowed Lucy to use her next spell known as Windy Sky Tower. She made two emerald green rings of wind be formed above her left palm, before making two emerald green rings also be in her right palm, and Lucy slammed her hands together for the four rings to all be together. They all floated in midair right in front of her. and seeing thin emerald green beams of light shine from the rings made Lucy softly smile at how she upgraded this spell. In fact, she was ready to see its level of power by throwing all of the rings down towards Emiria!

"You're following my method of creating new attacks by significantly enhancing spells, Kotomi! You're smart, but not smart enough to defeat me!" Emiria told Lucy while looking slightly impressed at her skills, before frowning in a serious manner.

Lucy replied in a confident tone, as she looked optimistic, "We'll just see who's smarter right now, Emiria! Sixth spell of Wind Magic, I call upon thee! Drilling Wind Typhoon!"

"Whatever you do, it's futile! Let's see if you can withstand Frigid Hail at full power!" Emiria responded fiercely, as she charged up the power of the pale blue sphere that was forming in her right hand.

Emiria threw her pale blue orb up into the air for it to explode in a large blast of its color, resulting in shards of ice that would come down on different areas of the ice garden. That didn't prevent Lucy from making an emerald green drill of Wind Magic surround her left hand, and she inhaled air right before exhaling it all down on the drill in a very swift manner. By adding more wind to the drill, it immediately gained four more drills of wind on top of it while they spun much faster. Lucy started to move as fast as her drills, bouncing through the air at rapid speeds to catch up with the rings, and Lucy was intending to take a massive risk in the next few seconds.

Lucy propelled herself down towards the rings at a high level of speed, almost getting near Emiria, and she aggressively slammed the drills against all of the rings! The rings ended up bursting in front of Emiria to create a spiraling tower of emerald green winds, but the tower was much larger than in the previous fight. Its winds were heavier, easily pulling Emiria into the attack, and the highest portion of the wind tower sent itself down towards Emiria while spinning like a drill. It spun with enough force to obliterate any pieces of hail that were in its way while their Ice Magic only increased its level of density, and Emiria was being slammed around the fast-moving tower at rapid speeds with no way of avoiding the drilling winds. They soon struck her, resulting in an emerald green blast that spun inward as it made the tower's winds compress to instantly explode against Emiria's body, and she screamed in excruciating pain from feeling high amounts of wind drill through different parts of her body! The intense amount of wind sent Lucy flying quite high into the air for her to be struck by some of the hail that created pale blue explosions, before Emiria was launched into the air by the strong currents of wind, and both women quickly fell down to roughly land on broken parts of Emiria's ice. As Emiria and Lucy heard the hailstorm cease during their moments of trying to stand up, they both frowned at each other in annoyance and hoped their final attacks could make this battle not end in a stalemate.

Emiria decided to activate the Frosty Shield spell before unleashing her final attack, though. She made a light blue dome of ice surround herself, before making a light blue aura surround her hands, and several of the ice chunks from earlier were being pulled towards the dome. Upon seeing that occur, Emiria gently placed her right hand on the ground for the ice to specifically be attracted to her location. They obeyed her silent thought about attaching themselves to the shield, and the chunks of ice were engulfed in a light blue aura. Before Emiria propelled them off of the shield to make her projectiles hastily hit her opponent, she looked at Lucy in a somewhat disapproving manner.

"I never thought that I would have to use this spell or its fusion variant in the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour, but this is a last-resort attack. Ice Goddess' Cryogenic Icy Winter Plume!" Emiria explained to Lucy with an annoyed facial expression, before fiercely stating the name of her final spell.

Emiria's words caused Lucy to reply in a serious manner, feelings of sternness in her eyes, "We'll just see who has the strongest final spell, Emiria! Kaze's Windy Spring Hurricane!"

Lucy's final spell made a spiraling mass of emerald green feathers form in the center of her left palm, before the feathers faded away to leave behind a spiraling emerald green aura of Wind Magic that rapidly began expanding outward. The spell expanded from the air that rose upward from Lucy's palm, and she could feel the air strengthening the spell while also solidifying it. The solid aura ironically still spiraled around in a clockwise manner, having fluidity like the wind itself. However, the wind quickly surprised Lucy from how she got to see Emiria sending her Ice Magic into the ground and the Ice Magic took the form of extremely cold winds that were blowing up from beneath the surface! Even though Lucy's spell could surprisingly absorb some of the heavy winds and increase in power, Lucy felt that it was necessary for her to jump up into the air and land on a one-handed handstand that would block one beam of Emiria's icy wind that was coming up like a geyser. Lucy managed to block that geyser of icy wind with her own spring-like attack, firmly placing her right hand on the ground, and the spring of Wind Magic started to compress like a normal springboard would.

That didn't quell the entirety of Emiria's spell, which had its pale blue aura take the shape of a large hexagonal snowflake with icy branches protruding from each corner. The ends of the branches had spiraling geysers of frigid snow shooting up from the ground, and any snow that fell from the geysers would immediately transform into ice to freeze the ground upon touching it. Any snow that touched the newly-transformed ice would only cause the ice to quickly expand outward, but the vortexes of snow were just as dangerous. When Emiria accidentally moved her right hand's ring finger, the snow geyser that was furthest from Lucy ended up jumping upward to explode! It created a fast-moving snowfall that was reminiscent of a blizzard, its icy winds making the explosion's air be frosty enough to create a white fog that added more coldness to this battle, and increasing the coldness in the ice garden only made the Ice Magic from underground quickly recreate that snow geyser with full power.

As the snow geyser gained more power from the icy winds, Lucy felt like she had no choice other than maintaining this handstand. She couldn't afford to move around the battlefield right now, aware that Emiria could attack with the geysers. However, she was caught off-guard by Emiria propelling the ice chunks off of the dome to use them as another set of projectiles! The ice chunks rapidly headed towards Lucy, who felt like her only option was to shift from a handstand to firmly placing her right foot on the spring attack while she simultaneously reactivated Kaze's Feather Dance. This series of actions resulted in Lucy spinning like she had done before, but she was now spinning on one foot like an ice skater who had immense amounts of expertise. Her foot spun rapidly while pressing against the spring, before the tension pushed her off to where she was now rapidly spinning in midair like she had for an unspecified amount of time while being at a high altitude as if she had jumped off of a springboard. Lucy's speedy spinning matched the property of her attack, which sprang up from the ground to spin around her in the same direction, and the strong winds from Lucy's rotation surrounded her body. The airstream also absorbed Emiria's icy winds, powering up Lucy's spell even further, and Lucy's high level of rotation speed also blew away the fog!

"To dodge my spell with those movements, along with spinning at that intensity to blow away the fog... That's quite an impressive level of tactical skill." Emiria stated aloud with a miffed facial expression, as she watched the massive pale blue explosions from the hail occur on the ground.

Lucy stated in a panicked manner, as the massive blasts of Ice Magic propelled her and the spring attack to a much higher altitude, "Whoa, whoa! Don't make me spin much faster like this!"

The heavy winds from the blasts got absorbed by Lucy's spell, which started bouncing in midair like how she was now bouncing and spinning much more rapidly on one foot to where any frost on her body was instantly breaking apart like a hurricane's winds smashing through glass windows. The shards of frost fell down to the ground, which now looked like an icy terrain with curved and spiky icicles jutting upward to display how the blasts' energy had been sporadic. That didn't stop Emiria from raising her hand to make her fingers point straight up, which made her snow geysers quickly move up into the sky while the icy blasts from the hail had enhanced their power to where they were surrounded by a light blue aura.

However, three of them were quickly met with how Lucy's attack stretched upward like rubber before aggressively slamming them downward with vicious bursts of wind that were massive! The massive pale blue blasts quickly became emerald green blasts, which were just as enormous, but they had the effect of forcing the heavy winds of Wind Magic down on to the ground right before they would spring forward in a curved manner to make themselves become strong gusts of wind that literally blew Emiria off of her feet. As she was sent flying through the air, Emiria watched her somewhat dizzy opponent easily jump out of the wind-based coil spring and be light as a feather with a rapid amount of speed to where she could bounce all over the air itself like a pinball bouncing off of solid surfaces. Lucy was propelling herself through the air while spinning extremely fast, almost as if she was using teleportation, and the winds that surrounded her body were constantly sending Wind Magic into her legs for them to be both stronger and lighter.

Lucy propelled herself up several feet high to face her spell, which was now just slightly growing more in size from taking in a passing breeze, and she felt like it was time to end this fight. Since Emiria was now flying back towards the remnants of an ice stalagmite, Lucy aggressively sent her final spell of Wind Magic down towards her coldhearted rival with a powerful and extremely swift heel kick. That greatly increased the spell's speed, which allowed it to quickly get only a few inches away from Emiria's face, and all that she could do was widen her eyes in utter shock at this situation. When the spell made the slightest amount of contact with Emiria's body, it created a massive green blast that spun inwards while the heavy winds blew through the ice garden. The winds drowned out Emiria's screams of excruciating pain that were inside the blast, and she felt herself getting attacked by bursts of wind that seemed to aggressively propel themselves like coil springs to crash into her with vicious amounts of strength. Coupled with them, the strength of the blast from the spell itself was definitely at a stronger level than the enhanced version of her strongest attack.

As the emerald green clouds of smoke began to clear up, Lucy started to decelerate her level of spinning speed. Her legs had white clouds of steam coming off of them while she had been bruised and bloodied from taking damage earlier in the fight, and Lucy panted heavily. She looked at Emiria, whose clothes had also been ripped apart while she was heavily injured. Blood came from some of her wounds as she panted as heavily as Lucy, and the two women weakly walked towards each other. Lucy sternly stared at Emiria, who glared at her in a very serious manner, and Lucy weakly moved her left foot as if she was going into a combat stance for another spell of Wind Magic. However, her plan was halted by the sight of Emiria losing consciousness and groaning as she fell forward to hit the grass.

"How could I... be defeated... by.. a bunch... of losers?" Emiria asked in a pained and angry manner, before becoming unconscious.

Lucy simply replied to Emiria's question in a calm manner, thinking about her opponent's emotional and physical pain, "Do you now know how it feels when you cause tremendous pain to other people?"

The fact that Emiria was now defeated prompted Lucy to cease with fighting, and she actually couldn't even fight anymore if she desired to battle Hiyasu today. Hiyasu probably wouldn't even bother facing someone whose legs had been shaky, and Lucy fell backwards to simply rest on the grass. She finally managed to obtain a victory against her fiercest rival, which made Lucy softly smile at how all her hours of training resulted in making up for her loss on the first day. Even though Lucy won against her rival, she hoped that Risa wouldn't lose against Hiyasu.

---

Concurrently, at the clearing...

Risa and Hiyasu were currently locked in a stalemate, due to Risa using Stellar Psi with a high amount of magical power to immobilize Hiyasu. The secondary guild mistress wanted to go help Emiria, who had been screaming in pain, but Risa made her attention be focused on this fight. Hiyasu wouldn't view today as a loss for her and Emiria, as the current circumstances left Risa to fight without her partner's assistance. Therefore, Hiyasu felt like she could win this 1-on-1 battle and she smirked arrogantly while believing that any of Risa's enhancements in power couldn't allow her to triumph in any environment that involved water.

Hiyasu built up magical power to make an azure blue aura engulf her body, surprising Risa enough to where the Stellar Psi spell was released, That allowed Hiyasu to use a spell called Azure Water Whirl, and she stretched out her arms while aiming her palms at Risa. Hiyasu moved her right hand away for a moment to aim it at the lake, sending her magical power towards it in only a few seconds, and she made a spiraling tower of azure blue bubbles emerge from the lake. Hiyasu pushed her hand forward in an aggressive manner, causing to bubbles to all fly upward, and moving her hand in a clockwise manner caused the bubbles to spin in that same direction.

The bubbles moved around in a large circle while they gained more speed, and Hiyasu sent them all down towards Risa! Risa watched the bubbles gain more speed and power on their descent, their azure blue aura growing in size and glowing brighter. The aura nearly blinded Risa's eyes, but the presence of all the luminous light in this battle logically created several black shadows on the ground. Risa quickly went down into the lake's shadow, and she avoided getting struck by the bubbles that made large azure blasts occur! They left behind large puddles of water, which were rotating clockwise, and the water puddles shined with magical power from absorbing the sleet from the snowy side of the field.

Risa emerged from a shadow on that side of the field, and she activated the spell known as Magenta's Glittering Psychic Dark Flares. Risa fired a ring of glittery flames from her mouth, and the flames were in a dark magenta color. The ring headed straight towards Hiyasu, but it was quickly intercepted by two large twisters of water rising up from the puddles that were in front of Hiyasu. The antagonist watched the twisters slam themselves against Risa's attack, causing azure blue blasts to occur while they were enormous, and the fact that the blasts were larger after the bubbles were now puddles simply meant that the first part of the spell was like seeing the lake water on its surface while the second part of the spell was like the water's true form underneath the lake's surface. The twisters of water were strong enough to douse Risa's flames from both sides of the ring, but they missed a flame that Risa pulled back towards her body. The dark magenta flames created fiery blasts that were much smaller than their normally-massive size, but the shadows of the flames exploded with a high amount of destructive power to leave behind tall flames.

"This is my chance!" Risa thought to herself with a confident facial expression, as she stepped on to one of the puddles.

Hiyasu stated aloud while smirking in an arrogant manner, her eyes viewing Risa's movements with disbelief, "You must really be moronic to step on to one of my puddles!"

"It would be moronic of me to not have a plan!" Risa retorted in a snarky manner, looking confident as she started to be pulled out one of the twisters that rose up from the puddles.

Risa applied Psychic Magic to her feet, which allowed her to slide on the winds around the twister in perfect circles without falling through the water. Risa made her feet kick water on to some of the other puddles, causing the twisters to emerge from the puddles as if they had been attacked by Risa firing a spell from atop the first twister of water, and all of the twisters lunged towards that projectile. That only prompted Risa to jump upward, and the collision of water twisters allowed her to see them create seven enormous blasts of Water Magic! They were powerful enough to generate gusts of wind that pushed Risa higher into the air, but using Psychic Magic to make the dark magenta flame firmly stand on her palm was a smart move for Risa to see the flame grow much larger.

She began to lunge down towards Hiyasu, who activated the Azure Akuruku spell for the possibility of a close-combat situation happening soon. Risa widened her eyes in a somewhat surprised manner, as she thought Hiyasu preferred long-range attacks, but that only led Risa to extend her right hand. She sent her dark magenta flame into the taller flames that were already burning to create intense heat, and Risa proceeded to put her left hand over the dark magenta fire that grew four times its original size as it stayed on her right hand. Risa used her hands to shape the flame into a fireball, and she was quickly getting close to Hiyasu.

Hiyasu decided to counter her opponent's attack by jumping up to spin like a drill, and her clawed hands violently spun at rapid speeds to where her slashes could likely slice off Risa's limbs. The Sabertooth mage slammed the fireball against her opponent, physically trying to push her body forward as she sent some more magical power into the attack. Hiyasu pushed against the fireball while sending more magical power into her own spell, and the clashing attacks resulted in a dark magenta explosion! Its fire engulfed Hiyasu, who spun rapidly in midair to get the large flames off of her body while simultaneously coating herself with her azure aura of Water Magic, and she watched the explosion send Risa sliding several feet backwards to be near the tall flames.

"If you think that mundane techniques will help you win this fight, then you're blindly optimistic." Hiyasu explained to Risa with a stern look on her face, not minding how the clearing was becoming filled with more fire.

Risa replied in a confident tone of voice, assurance being in her magenta eyes, "If the recent circumstances can be used to my advantage, then there's nothing wrong with being optimistic!"

"In fact, let's see if your Water Magic can win against the power of my shadows!" Risa stated to Hiyasu as she maintained her confidence, before slamming her hands together.

Risa began to build up magical power in her hands, and she let them be pushed apart by how this next spell made the shadows of the newest flames rise up from the ground to form a black orb in between her hands. Risa could feel the immense power of the Shadow Magic, liking how it was surrounded by a black aura before the color changed to being dark magenta. As Risa held the orb with both hands and stretched her arms forward, the shadows in front of her began to take the shapes of tidal waves. That was because of Risa viewing Hiyasu's Water Magic as a problem in this fight, and the black orb started to shine in a dark magenta color. It absorbed the shadowy waves, before shooting out what appeared to be a large stream of dark magenta fire, and Risa squeezed the orb for it to unleash a large beam of dark magenta Psychic Shadow Dragon Slayer Magic. This spell was known as Shadowy Psychic's Dark Theatrics, and it required Risa to make the hand motions for shifting waves while she pretended to fire a beam from her mouth.

That allowed the spell to move much faster, obeying what Risa seemingly commanded it to do, and her attack crashed into Hiyasu! It created a dark magenta blast that was quite large, before being replaced by a black blast. Hiyasu was being attacked by the blast's flames, which changed from being dark magenta to being black as they detonated on her body, but the blast quickly faded away to reveal that Risa's enemy only sustained minor injuries. That was due to Hiyasu coating herself with Water Magic that had been quite dense, and it acted like protective armor.

The armor had been destroyed, however, and that prompted Hiyasu to make her dense Water Magic coat her body again. That also applied to her hands, and Hiyasu created the Azure Bubble Bomb spell in her left hand while she created a pair of azure blue whirlpools in her right hand. She slammed her hands together, causing the spells to merge together, and fusing Azure Whirlpool Roulette with Azure Bubble Bomb allowed Hiyasu to create an azure blue whirlpool that was in between both of her hands while azure blue frost was being emitted from it. This fusion spell was known as Azure Whirlpool Roulette Bubble, and Hiyasu hoped that it would allow her to have good luck in this fight.

"Let's just see how lucky you'll be, Sabertooth mage!" Hiyasu stated to Risa with a fierce facial expression, as she threw the projectile at her.

Risa asked Hiyasu with a curious look on her face, as she saw the attack constantly alternate between in an azure blue or light blue shade, "What do the different shades represent?"

"I won't tell you, but I personally hope it ends up being azure blue." Hiyasu stated with a calm smile on her face, before slyly smirking and thrusting her right hand forward to send more magical power into the attack.

Hiyasu watched the whirlpool spin at a much faster rate, which also sped up the frequency of her spell changing its color. Hiyasu kept her eyes focused on the attack, really hoping that she would be lucky with the end result. As the attack became light blue for a few seconds, it released light blue clouds of hot steam. That simply meant Hiyasu's attack would primarily contain hot water, but shifting to an azure blue color with blue clouds of frost in that specific color meant that Hiyasu's attack would contain water that was at an extremely chilly temperature.

She watched the attack head towards Risa, who tried to slow it down by creating an Esper Ball in her right hand. Risa sent a small amount of her dark magenta magic into the pink orb, allowing the Esper Ball to become dark magenta for a few seconds, and she threw the attack at Hiyasu's spell. An average-sized pink blast initially occurred, before Hiyasu's azure blue spell tore through it while moving somewhat slower. The heavy spell of dense Water Magic was slightly levitated two feet up from its original position to be immobilized for a brief moment while having a dark magenta orb swirling around in its center, but the moment that the whirlpool was engulfed in a dark magenta aura was the moment that it became light blue and simultaneously detonated to create a light blue explosion!

The explosion was massive while Hiyasu's spell ripped apart to become several scalding hot bubbles that launched themselves towards Risa, and infusing a space-affecting spell with much more powerful Psychic Magic had been the main reason that Risa tore apart Hiyasu's spell. The moment that the Esper Ball's effect made the whirlpool levitate caused the dark magenta aura to be part of the whirlpool's amount of physical space being altered, and that caused the remnants of the strengthened Esper Ball to explode while they made rends through the whirlpool for it to be dismantled into bubbles. Upon seeing her spell land on the wrong color, Hiyasu widened her eyes in shock.

Hiyasu thought to herself with an astounded look in her eyes, as her mouth was slightly open to express the feeling of shock, "In order to likely bend luck or fate to her favor, she initially slowed down my spell and temporarily ceased it movement just enough for the color to change at the right time!"

"How do you like my Dark Esper Psi Explosion attack, Hiyasu? Your tag-team's fusion spells with Emiria inspired me to be creative with my own spells for this battle!" Risa asked Hiyasu with a somewhat cocky look on her face, before speaking with the feeling of determination in her voice.

That prompted Hiyasu to calmly reply to Risa while shifting to a more serious facial expression, "You're clever, but not clever enough to win against me."

Hiyasu aimed her right hand at Risa, before making her hand form a fist that appeared to crush the air. That caused all the steaming bubbles to simultaneously burst, creating thick clouds of steam, and Risa winced in pain from how the bubbles that popped around her were creating steaming hot splashes of water! The water scalded Risa, burning her skin to where she screamed in pain, and Hiyasu slid her right hand forward for the remaining hot water to go into the lake. When it fell into the lake, Hiyasu waved her right hand in a circular manner for the water to rapidly spin. It spun in the clockwise direction with small clouds of steam coming out of it, and Hiyasu liked how this would help her next spell be quite hot.

She activated a spell called Aqua Hot Spring, and the spell interestingly caused a blue bubble of water to aggressively bounce out of the lake. It sprang up high into the air, before coming down to gain more speed and power on its descent. Risa watched the bubble crash into the ground, and it created a powerful burst of water that swamped the snowy side of the battlefield! Risa hastily placed her hands on the ground to send her Psychic Shadow Dragon Slayer Magic into the earth, her eyes watching it create a thin black shadow that linked itself to the shadow of Hiyasu's spell, and Risa quickly stood up straight for the purpose of jumping up into the air.

That couldn't save her from the sadistic effect of Aqua Hot Spring, which made several azure blue bubbles slowly rise up from the steaming water that was dousing Risa's flames from earlier. The bubbles all floated back down to the ground while shining with azure blue beams of light around them, before springing up several feet in the air to reach a high altitude. Some of them hit Risa directly, creating azure blue explosions in midair while she screamed in excruciating pain, and the bubbles that didn't strike Risa went back down to the ground with much more power and speed to viciously burst upon hitting the water. Those bubbles created more waves that swamped more of the battlefield, even sending more hot water into the lake.

As she had more burns on her body and winced in pain, Risa thought to herself, "If I fall into that scalding hot water, I'll be boiled until I die! That water is violently shifting around, and Hiyasu just keeps making so much of it be on the battlefield!"

Risa further thought to herself, as her eyes widened to express the feeling of realization, "Then again, that may not end up being such a bad thing!"

Risa shouted fiercely while creating a dark magenta sphere in her right hand, looking very serious, "Psychic Magenta's Shadowy Judgment of Heaven and Hell!"

That prompted Hiyasu to say aloud to herself in amazement, looking surprised, "What is she planning to do?!"

She watched Risa's attack alternate between being in a dark magenta color and being in the regular shade of magenta, and Risa aimed her attack down at the azure blue water. As the sphere went down towards the water, it eerily casted shadows that were in a dark magenta color. That corresponded with how the orb itself was becoming dark magenta for at least ten seconds, and the dark magenta shadows slowly moved outward. They started to be in the regular shade of magenta as a way of matching the sphere's alternate color that began to appear, and the magenta sphere struck the water as a way of repelling it all to curve upwards in different directions!

The azure blue water soon became dark magenta, which resulted from Risa slashing at all the water with her left hand to slash the space around it. Risa also applied Psychic Magic to her feet as a way of propelling herself towards Hiyasu, and Risa slashed the air in front of her opponent several times. By slashing the space surrounding Hiyasu, Risa was able to immobilize her enemy and cut both sides of her face from a distance. As Hiyasu screamed in pain, all of the curved waves of dark magenta water moved towards her shadow. She felt herself get struck by the scalding hot water, which gained more heat from being powered up by Risa's magic, and all of the waves ended up bursting after they struck Hiyasu! Hiyasu was burnt quite badly by the attack, her skin starting to be charred and brown, and she was sent flying into the air! As Hiyasu was propelled into the air, Risa glanced down at the waves' black shadows and smiled at the next part of the plan that she'd silently create in this fight against Hiyasu.

Hiyasu got to see that the crashing waves created a thick layer of hot steam, which prompted her to use the Azure Hydro spell from earlier. She shot out a large jet stream of water from her mouth, and the water had frost coming off of it. Hiyasu interestingly aimed this attack up into the sky, which caused the jet stream of water to go up high into the air before it would come down in the form of water bursting to resemble rain. The rain started to cool down the hot temperature of the clearing, its cold air blowing away the steam for Hiyasu to see a shadow rising up from the ground while it had Risa's silhouette, and seeing her allegedly revert to her normal appearance made Hiyasu smile confidently.

"Even with your shadowy abilities, you can't stop me from using spells such as this one! Aqua Azure Restraint!" Hiyasu shouted down to Risa in a confident manner, as she built up two orbs of Water Magic in her hands.

That prompted Risa to respond in a calm manner, looking unusually stoic, "All right, then. That just means I'll have to use Dark Magenta's Psychic Mind of Soul Absorption."

She chose to sit down on the ground in the position for meditation, taking a deep breath and focusing her mind as Hiyasu threw the two orbs down to the ground. They both landed in front of Risa to create spiraling beams of water that circled around her, before they formed an azure blue sphere of water around her body. This spell was meant to restrain opponents from moving, since the water in the sphere was heavy and dense from having a high amount of Water Magic infused into it, and Hiyasu could also use it in an attempt to make opponents lose air while they'd experience the same feelings of pain from drowning in water.

Risa didn't panic, though, and she continued to quietly meditate with her eyes closed as her spell was still active. She began to coat her body in the dark magenta aura, which began to expand outward, and Risa focused her mind to make the aura extend the range of its power. The aura kept expanding outward, before slight amounts of it left the sphere to strike the trees. When the aura hit some of the trees in the clearing, they were engulfed in a dark magenta aura for a few seconds before they fired harmless dark magenta orbs of energy at Risa. She ignored the feeling of the orbs gently touching her after they passed through the watery sphere, and the aura around her body grew much larger.

This process repeated itself by making the aura leave the sphere again for it to strike the remaining trees, as well as any flowers or grass that had been on the ground, and the orbs that were fired from the plants seemed to be giving Risa more energy. In exchange for giving her more magical power and stamina, the plants in the area began to wither while they became dark magenta. Hiyasu started to look very disturbed at how a spell that seemed to involve peace and meditation could still cause damage in an interesting way, and she also saw the dark magenta aura around Risa's body become immensely larger in size. The aura proceeded to be sent down into Risa's shadow, however, and all of that magic seemed like it would be sent elsewhere. When the dark magnta aura was completely gone from Risa's body, she surprised Hiyasu by quickly opening her eyes that displayed fierceness before she vanished in a puff of black smoke that was the same color as her own shadow.

"Wait, where did she go?!" Hiyasu asked aloud with a stunned look on her face, her eyes expressing disbelief at how she seemingly trapped one of Risa's clones.

Risa exclaimed in a serious tone, as she rapidly jumped up from the shadow of her enemy with her aura-covered left fist being raised high for an uppercut, "I'm right here!"

Hiyasu asked herself in an astounded tone, as she was sent flying into the air after being punched in the chin and coughing up blood, "How... How did she make that happen?!"

This plan had actually occurred back when Risa placed her hands on the ground to send her magic into the earth, and making a shadow be connected to the water of the Aura Hot Spring spell was Risa's method of trying to make that attack be manipulated into only clashing with Psychic Magenta's Shadowy Judgment of Heaven and Hell. When the waves had struck Hiyasu, they left behind shadows that Risa molded into a black sphere. She sent dark magenta Psychic Shadow Dragon Magic into the sphere, before slamming it against the ground amidst the steam to create a clone of herself, and Risa's clone had read her brief thoughts on what to do after she foresaw Hiyasu's movement-restraining spell. The clone would intentionally get physically immobilized by Hiyasu's spell, but Risa's clone would activate an enhancement spell and send all of the gained magical power to Risa's actual body that went down into a nearby tree's shadow before Hiyasu had used her rain's cold air to blow away the steam.

Speaking of Hiyasu, she groaned in frustration at how a mage who didn't wield water-based spells had been turning the tide of this battle away from being a clear victory for the secondary guild master of Cerulean Frost. Hiyasu tightly clenched her fists, and she unleashed the spell known as Aqua Azure Ring. Hiyasu placed her hands next to each other while aiming them down at the ground, and an azure blue ring of water formed in between her hands. Hiyasu thrusted her hands forward for the ring to grow larger and float in midair while its center had six bubbles floating around in a hexagonal formation, but that was only before she activated this spell again to fuse the rings together.

That caused the first ring to become larger while its bubbles expanded in speed and size, but putting one foot on the ring caused Hiyasu to start spinning at high speeds! She spun on both feet in a counterclockwise path, spinning like she was demonstrated an advanced version of Kaze's Feather Dance, but Hiyasu's rapid spinning provoked the bubbles to move in that direction before they ended up bursting to create six cyclones of water! The cyclones were aimed down at the ground while their rapid spinning made the azure blue frost come off of them in plentiful amounts of glittery sparkles resembling diamond dust, but the azure diamond dust exploded in several azure blue blasts when the water from the cyclones made contact with it!

As Hiyasu aimed her hands down at a certain part of the clearing to direct her ring towards it, Risa thought to herself with an annoyed look on her face, "Just when this fight had a slow part to it, Hiyasu made it more dangerous. Based on the explosions, that frosty dust is very dangerous when it's combined with Water Magic."

Hiyasu asked Risa with an arrogant facial expression, before closing her eyes and raising her right arm upward to make the cyclones quickly shoot their water above the ring instead of below it, "Are you surprised that I have no qualms with using this dangerous spell during the festival, Risa Ryusei? Right now, I'm well-positioned to obliterate you with my attacks or defend against your spells with my water cyclones!"

Upon seeing some water splash towards her while the azure diamond dust was mixed into it, Risa stated with an alarmed facial expression, "Oh, no!"

She was quickly caught in an azure blue blast that had been quite large, due to all of the diamond dust that was infused with the water, and Risa screamed in excruciating pain. She felt more pain from the pressure of water that was soon sent down into the blast, due to Hiyasu purposely lowering her right arm, and the pressure knocked Risa off of her feet before the azure diamond dust on her body exploded! She winced in pain while being bruised and bloodied, not liking the current circumstances, and Risa applied some Psychic Shadow Dragon Magic to her feet. She ran quite fast to get away from Hiyasu's spell, and Risa only turned around when she heard one of the attacks create a massive explosion!

That level of power was worrisome, but noticing the light from the large blast made Risa slightly smile at how there was still a chance for her to win this battle. She surprised Hiyasu by running towards the blast, and Risa wasted no time with grabbing the blast's shadow. She ate it quickly, before running towards the shadows of other blasts that were occurring in the clearing, and Risa grabbed several shadows to eat them as if she was consuming a large supply of food. The shadows gave Risa more magical power while a dark magenta aura engulfed her body, and the sight of Hiyasu's spell coming back to create more water with azure diamond dust only made Risa feel like this was the best moment for her to counterattack.

Risa created the spell known as Magenta Soul Eradication Bomb in her left hand, and a black sphere was formed. Beams of light in the dark magenta color emanated from the sphere to become that specific color, and Risa used her right hand to pick up some sparkly pieces of the azure diamond dust that hadn't been covered in water yet. She threw them down into a puddle of water, before jumping above the puddle while simultaneously activating Stellar Psi to use the spell on herself, and the powerful blast that occurred was able to push Risa up several feet into the air. That was before Stellar Psi propelled her even higher into the sky, and Risa made herself be several feet above Hiyasu. The antagonist watched Risa throw the black sphere at the ring itself, creating a dark magenta explosion, and Risa smiled confidently at how she put more power into the spell right before throwing it down at the ring's center.

Hiyasu asked her opponent in an enraged manner, as she saw the ring and the cyclones start to become distorted, "What have you done to my attack?!"

Risa responded in a snarky tone, looking calm, "Well, it's not like I distorted the space around your ring."

She added in a comically happy tone of voice, as she smiled, "Also, putting more power into this attack extends its range."

The range of the space distortion had spread out to the entire ring, causing it to crazily bend in various directions while the cyclones and bubbles also became distorted. They were now sending water and diamond dust down in curved trajectories, only for the explosions to instantly occur in midair because of the spatial distortion being quite powerful. It had even been powerful enough to make Hiyasu's limbs contort in various directions, and she screamed in immense pain from feeling her body's bones and muscles start to bend in jagged paths. Hiyasu's Aqua Azure Ring also had dark magenta flames remaining on it, but Risa quickly levitated them towards her by using Stellar Psi.

Risa managed to get her flames off of Hiyasu's attack, which ended up bursting to leave behind a large mass of water that would likely flood different parts of the clearing. Hiyasu weakly aimed her right hand down at the water, however, and she absorbed some of the water that was still falling in midair. She let the rest of the water fall down to the ground, almost like watching the water of an actual waterfall, and that led Hiyasu to raise her left hand in a pained manner. She aimed it up at the ceiling while using Azure Rain's Waterfall, one of the spells that overwhelmed Juvia with its high level of power, and Hiyasu made the azure blue raincloud be several feet above her in midair for it to interestingly be slightly above Risa's head.

Risa chose to look down, however, and she saw azure blue bubbles rising up from all the water that had been on the ground during this fight. When the bubbles reached the raincloud, they went into it and popped for them to have it absorb their power. Some of the bubbles even contained the azure diamond dust, which would further strengthen this spell, and Hiyasu quickly descended to the ground while Risa managed to strangely catch one bubble and hold it in her right hand. Hiyasu smirked up at the raincloud in an overconfident manner, believing that her victory was assured, and she let it charge up magical power.

"I can't merge any other spells with this attack right now, so I'll just have to wait sixty seconds for my attack to unleash its maximum amount of power." Hiyasu stated aloud to herself, smiling confidently as she thought about the large and dense waterfall that would slam down on Risa before the tremendous azure blue blast would occur.

Risa shouted fiercely while the dark magenta aura engulfed her body, causing Hiyasu to widen her eyes in shock, "Let's give more power to the cloud! In fact, let's counter the chilly water with mystical fire! Dark Magenta Psychic Mystical Storm!"

Hiyasu exclaimed in a shocked manner, her eyes expressing belief, "Is she seriously going to try to do that?! Is she out of her mind?!"

Risa was perfectly sane and fearless while using Stellar Psi to make the dark magenta flames move towards the bubble, and she was intent on coating this little projectile of water with fire. Risa could feel the hot temperature of the flames on her hands, but she watched the dark magenta orb for her final spell form in this same hand. It absorbed the bubble, which became dark magenta from being coated by more powerful magic pertaining to the flames, and Risa felt her spell burn at an extremely hot temperature with intense heat waves emanating from it. Also, the fire danced around the spell in a circle while having the appearance of fast-moving dark magenta waves.

She threw the spell upward, before sending the dark magenta aura down into her left foot, and Risa aggressively kicked her attack up into the cloud for it to be propelled with much more power. That helped her overload the amount of power that Hiyasu's raincloud could handle, and Risa floated down to the ground as she watched the cloud start to darkly glow in a dark magenta color. She could foresee the result of the spell while also being able to control the attack with Psychic Shadow Magic from her mind, and Risa was ready to finally win this battle.

In a few seconds, the raincloud sent down a plentiful amount of fiery beams that were all headed towards Hiyasu. The woman with light blue hair could only defend herself with her bare hands and look terrified, since the sight of her raincloud becoming the weapon for a psychotic firestorm had been quite scary to see. Hiyasu was quickly struck by the fiery beams, which all created massive fiery blasts in a dark magenta color while Risa could freely pick up the beams' black shadows that appeared on the ground, and the blasts spun outward to cover the clearing in their fire. Hiyasu screamed in immense pain from all the blasts that occurred around her, as well as feeling tremendous pain from the flames that were burning her skin, and she ended up falling to the ground. Hiyasu could no longer move, prompting Risa to stop attacking her. As Risa watched all of the smoke from the blasts blow through the area, she panted heavily and felt her body fall forward. She landed on the ground to be right in front of the lake, which still had steam emerging from it like a hot spring, but the willpower and desire to win the battle caused Risa to use her remaining strength for the purpose of getting on her knees.

When the clouds of smoke finally faded away from the clearing, Hiyasu weakly told Risa in a pained manner, "Risa, that... was a... good battle. You're... worthy.. of helping us... on the... final day."

Risa asked aloud with a curious look on her face, only for Hiyasu to lose consciousness, "The final day? Why would I need to help you on the last day of your Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour?"

As her hair returned to its original pink color, Risa told Hiyasu with a stern look on her face, "At least this was the day where I helped my friend protect everyone, you know. You and Emiria froze innocent people with ice, so don't be surprised that I made the icy garden now be ablaze with fire."

Risa tried to stand up, only to fall backwards. However, she was quickly caught by Samui. The fashionable mage not only saw how Risa's winter clothes had been torn and damaged from this fight, but she also took notice of all the mystical flames that were in the clearing. Some of them spread fire to the grass and trees, turning those blue plants into dark magenta plants, and Samui also noticed how other flames became a regular shade of magenta if they burnt themselves out for too long while in a dark magenta color. Samui smiled in an impressed manner from seeing the strength of Risa's magic, and she watched Aoiumi run through the clearing to go past her with the purpose of checking on Lucy's battle against Emiria. After seeing how hard the Sabertooth mages had fought against such strong mages, a brief thought back to the newspaper from the other day only made Samui's impressed smile be replaced by an expression resembling a frown. Something was on Samui's mind, but she felt like it would be better to have that conversation at a later point in the day.

---

One hour later, in the ice garden...

Samui had left the clearing with Aoiumi and Kaitōtīru, who had checked the coat pockets of Emiria and Hiyasu to see the shocking discovery of how they had an Ice Stone and a gem resembling the Azure Stone in their possession. Kaitōtīru had heard that the Azure Stone was stolen from the museum by a mage who had presumably been from a different guild, but she never assumed that a member of Cerulean Frost would hire a mage to steal a gem that everyone usually liked to see in its display case. Regardless of its power, Kaitōtīru hoped that Hiyasu would find another one or at least have the decency to return the stone after the festival concluded.

The Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour would last for a few more days, since some mages did have to be challenged by the hostesses. Emiria and Hiyasu had been escorted out of the ice garden's main area by Suzuna, who had come to the ice garden a few minutes ago to see what all the commotion had been related to. She waited until the girls woke up from being unconscious, before telling them that they would have to go rest in Cerulean Frost's infirmary for now instead of possibly damaging the garden any further. Any damage from Wind Magic caused Lucy to see Suzuna bowing her head in an apologetic manner, since the greeter of Cerulean Frost perceived this rematch as an official fight because of its high stakes that came with severe damage to the ice garden's plants.

Kūkiatsu had been standing behind Lucy and Risa, who both looked regretful at how they couldn't protect several of the plants from being harmed during the fights. Kūkiatsu narrowed his eyes in a stern and determined manner, silently promising that he would help the botanists of Seigan Town restore several of the winter plants to their natural state. As a researcher and wielder of Plant Magic, he felt that this particular matter was in his area of expertise. Although, at least he was an expert who had been very knowledgeable on something that he could be proud of.

That couldn't be said for Samui, who stood next to Suzuna while starting to give Risa a very guilty look. She didn't want to avert her eyes away from the pink-haired girl, not even noticing that mages such as Lyon and Sherria entered the ice garden after only sensing the presences of magic very faintly. When Samui had sensed Risa's magic, she wasn't just sensing Psychic Magic that had been quite potent. Upon seeing it during Risa's teamwork with Lucy and later seeing the dark magenta magic itself, that only confirmed what Samui had seen in the newspaper issue that was distributed before she took that small job as a researcher.

"Samui, what's wrong? Are you upset that we couldn't stop Emiria and Hiyasu from damaging this beautiful place?" Risa asked Samui with a concerned facial expression, taking a step forward at the same time that the older woman took a step back.

The sight of Risa's worried face only made Samui close her eyes, before sighing and proceeding to explain herself in a regretful tone, "I'm not upset about that, Risa Ryusei. However, I should probably call you Princess Risa and apologize profusely. When I first started out as a mage of Cerulean Frost, I arrogantly and foolishly decided to take a job where I had to capture a criminal. Princess, that criminal was Kyoko Kamizuru."

"Kyoko Kamizuru? Wasn't that the same criminal who ruled over Parmanie Town for nearly more than a decade, from what that one newspaper article said?" Sherria asked Samui with a curious facial expression, as Lyon seemed to nod with confirmation about the specific newspaper article that had gone around to different towns in Fiore's kingdom.

Samui replied in an apologetic manner, continuing to further explain herself, "When I first encountered Kyoko on a mission, I wasn't strong enough to defeat her. She ended up fleeing after knocking me unconscious, sadly. After that failure, I started taking jobs as a fashion model and I even ran into a woman named Sara Hoshiakari when she was buying winter clothes from Seigan. It wasn't a major conversation, but she took very long with shopping. That was what made me remember her, Princess Risa."

The fact that Samui had let Kyoko escape from that battle had caused Risa to slightly clench her fists, almost like she was experiencing the petty feeling of wanting to blame Samui's failure for the events that ended up occurring when Kyoko arrived in Parmanie Town. The memories of that horrible day regarding Sara's death were thoughts that Risa had moved on from, no longer wanting to be traumatized by past events in her life, and Risa didn't want to make her mind return to that awful day. Even if a part of her mind slightly felt like Samui didn't do enough to be helpful in the situation, Risa exhaled a soft breath as she viewed the facts of the current situation.

Eventually, Risa was going to be able to sit on the castle's throne and rule as the official princess of Parmanie Town. Cordelia was acting as the temporary princess until her return, which meant something very important. Risa was no longer just a random mage in a guild such as Sabertooth, but she was the woman who would need to rule over her people with policies that made everyone in the town be capable of experiencing a kind of happiness involving feelings of joy instead of trying to obtain happiness from being arrogant, sadistic, vengeful, and tyrannical.

Not wanting to have any policies involving vengeance meant that Risa wouldn't allow herself to be the kind of woman who viciously attacked sadistic people after the battles were over. From Risa's own standpoint of morality pertaining to the teachings from Lucy and Sting, using her magic to further harm mortally-wounded enemies would make her be just as evil as any mages who harmed people for vicious reasons. Since Samui was not that type of mage, Risa could only frown at Samui in a displeased manner from seeing her be so guilty about her past mistakes instead of realizing that there was no reason for her to carry any burdens of immense guilt.

Samui continued to speak in an extremely remorseful tone of voice, looking apologetic as she got down on her hands and knees in front of Risa with her head facing the ground, "As the years passed, I kept expecting to see another job where Kyoko was the specific outlaw who needed to be taken down! However, Kyoko bribed Parmanie Town's male representative on the Magic Council into never reporting any of her illegal activities to the other council members. Therefore, news of her crimes in your hometown never made it outside of Parmanie and I could've prevented her from committing several atrocities if I had been stronger! I'm so sorry for how you've suffered!"

Samui told Risa in a guilty tone while still frowning to express remorse and sorrow, "Princess, I feel very responsible for all the suffering that you had to endure and I'll gladly agree to any punishment that you view as suitable! Even if you want to burn me into ashes, I'll gladly accept my death!"

That prompted Risa to immediately reply in a commanding tone, frowning in a serious manner, "I see no need for you to take responsibility, Samui. Please raise your head."

Risa continued to frown, before explaining herself in a calm manner and softly smiling, "The only person who deserved to experience all my hatred was Kyoko, since she was the one who killed Sara. In any case, I'm glad you weren't part of Kyoko's evil team of psychic mages and that dark period of Parmanie's history has nothing to do with you. Putting your personal opinions aside, the fact is that you're Kotomi's friend. Master Sara told me that I would eventually have friends, and that includes you. I may have suffered for years after Sara's death, but all that pain led me to encounter some wonderful people. Samui, you don't need to blame yourself for what happened and don't apologize for the experiences in my life."

At that moment, Samui could only let the sight of Risa's merciful smile be shrouded by the tears that formed in her own eyes. Samui let her tears fall on to the grass, believing that she didn't deserve such kind words from the princess or even deserve to be forgiven. Samui's status as a dark mage in Cerulean Frost had also been a contributing factor towards why she hadn't wanted to be sociable around mages from legal guilds, but the fact that Risa herself had been vilified at a previous point in time allowed her to be the type of princess who could relate to a genuinely good person who had been in a dark guild.

She could sense that Samui was someone who aspired to be a fashion model as a way of probably having an easy method for getting herself out of poverty, which was better than being a dark mage for the enjoyment of committing crimes. Therefore, Risa had no reason to be displeased with her. She wasn't evil like the dark mage who intentionally stole Lucy's body and her identity as a Fairy Tail mage, but that started to make thoughts of curiosity enter Risa's mind. Samui didn't seem like the right person who could guide the Sabertooth mages to the next ring, and neither her or Aoiumi spoke of ever seeing it be flaunted by Emiria or Hiyasu.

Speaking of Hiyasu, Risa realized that she hadn't received any sort of special item for winning that fight. Emiria also hadn't given Lucy anything for winning in their rematch, and the circumstances were puzzling. Typically, the strongest mage in an event such as the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour would hand over the legendary ring as a prize to Lucy or Risa for being two of the first people to win battles against the hostesses. However, the fact that such a significant event happened at the most expected time caused Risa to have the feeling of confusion enter her eyes as she turned her attention to Suzuna.

"You said your name was Suzuna, right? When will Emiria and Hiyasu give us our rewards for defeating them in today's battles?" Risa asked Suzuna in a curious tone, before smiling softly.

Those questions prompted Suzuna to respond in a calm manner with a soft smile on her face, "Yes, I'm Suzuna Hiyayakana. Lady Emiria and Lady Hiyasu shall give prizes to the winners at the very end of the festival, but I guess that any casual conversations that occur tomorrow won't involve restrictions on asking about what the prizes are."

"If you don't mind me asking, why are they rewarding us with being worthy enough to assist them with a task later on in the festival? Didn't they also give that reward to Juvia, even though she lost her fight?" Lucy asked Suzuna with a look of slight nervousness on her face, anticipating the possibility of Emiria and Hiyasu purposely creating a dangerous avalanche to harm mages for their own amusement.

Lucy's interesting questions caused Suzuna to respond with an intrigued look on her face, her eyes appearing to show immense amounts of amazement, "Wow, it sounds like you're saying that the hostesses found three amazing competitors all in the same day! Their intentions usually aren't very clear to me, but I'm sure that they would appreciate it if you checked out the Frost Tunnel attraction during your days of free time! In fact, it's open to competitors and tourists for them to see Seigan Town's celebrities!"

That made Lucy's eyes comically twitch in an annoyed manner, as Suzuna seemed to slightly dodge the question by shifting to a different topic at the last moment. If there was a place in this town for people to chat with alleged celebrities, then Lucy would only talk with Emiria and Hiyasu about the point in time when they'd guide her to the next legendary ring. It just had to be in the town of Seigan, which obviously meant that the ring couldn't be anywhere else in Fiore, and Lucy hoped that Emiria wouldn't make her use spells for shoveling large amounts of snow as the special event pertaining to the task of finding the ring.

Wherever the ring was located, somebody had information about it and Lucy needed to find that particular individual. They were probably in an area of Seigan Town that she hadn't really ventured into yet, and Lucy wondered if Sting would accompany her to the Frost Tunnel. She briefly turned around to face the light dragon slayer, who grinned happily from hearing Lucy's conversation with Suzuna, and Sting felt like the Frost Tunnel could be a good starting point for the act of finding the ring. If the people there were familiar with their own town, then the ring had to have been seen somewhere.

Sting started to have a confident look in his blue eyes from assuming that there would be some kind of clue that would lead the group to the ring, and he wanted to be the first wizard who would find it. Sting thought that would be a great way to make amends for the fact that today's date with Lucy had been interrupted by mages who wanted to cause trouble, and helping her not have problems with finding the ring tomorrow would allow their search through Seigan to feel like another exciting date. Although, the sight of Lucy walking towards him with a soft smile on her face did prepare Sting for possibly comforting her if she felt like crying from possible frustration.

"Sting, maybe we can have a better date tomorrow. I'm sorry that it had to be interrupted by those guild mistresses, especially since they ruined the sight of the diamond dust and even destroyed some of the beautiful plants that we had seen." Lucy told her boyfriend with an apologetic facial expression, as her eyes expressed regret at how the plants were damaged.

Upon seeing his girlfriend start to be sad about how their morning date didn't go as planned, Sting stated to Lucy in a happy tone as he smiled from viewing the situation differently, "If we go out tomorrow, it'll be awesome to see if the date can be better than what we experienced today. You were so confident in that fight against Emiria, and you won the rematch! If you don't feel like acknowledging that right now, then I'll be the first one to say that I'm so proud of you! I always believed in you, especially today."

That caused Lucy to reply with a sweet smile on her face, as some feelings of happiness entered her eyes, "Thank you so much, Sting!"

She proceeded to kiss him on the lips while closing her eyes, and Sting closed his eyes as he returned the romantic kiss. Due to his words of confidence earlier in the day, Lucy was able to fight Emiria with feelings of confidence in her heart. She finally defeated the person who had been her strongest rival throughout this adventure, and Lucy ended the kiss for a moment. She could no longer restrain the urge to cheer happily, feeling excited that she was one of the winners today. She began to comically spin around in a manner that was similar how she had been spinning throughout the day, and Lucy was glad that her abilities allowed her to triumph over Emiria.

As Lucy was cheering about that, Lyon simply frowned at her and Risa in a stern manner. Risa was the mage who truly surprised him with her abilities, as he didn't expect her to defeat Hiyasu. That was different from the rematch against Emiria, which made the ice garden be more icy with wind coldly blowing through it, and Lyon honestly thought that Kotomi Takeuchi and Emiria Hidenka seemed quite equal in terms of magical power. The ultimate factor came down to who could use their spells in conjunction with creating the best strategies, and the green-haired girl was the clear winner.

However, Lyon felt surprised that Risa defeated the woman who helped Emiria defeat Juvia. He had been shocked to find Juvia outside on the ground with her body recovering from the numbness of the ice, and seeing that she was unconscious after fighting someone who wielded Water Magic only made Lyon wonder how the strongest guild in Fiore could have any of its Fairy Tail wizards lose against mages who weren't very popular. In addition to hearing some of Seigan Town's citizens view Hiyasu as the strongest water-wielding wizard, going into the clearing earlier and seeing the results of Risa's victory only made Lyon scoff in disbelief. In fact, seeing the new dark magenta plants and the withered trees being alongside the flames that apparently triumphed over Hiyasu's Water Magic simply made Lyon fold his arms as he viewed Risa's victory as nothing more than a sheer fluke. Therefore, Lyon narrowed his eyes and started frowning arrogantly at how his high level of skill with Ice-Make: Magic could produce results that didn't involve any reliance on luck.

"Excuse me, Suzuna. If it's not too much trouble to make requests in this event, please remind the hostesses to not forget about me." Lyon told Suzuna in a calm manner, as he started to look somewhat optimistic about fighting tomorrow.

Suzuna responded to him with a kind smile on her face, sounding somewhat sarcastic, "If you're immensely intent on fighting tomorrow, then I'll be glad to probably not have to defrost you or get a fishing rod to retrieve you from underwater."

Since Lyon's arrogance and confidence kept him from detecting Suzuna's sarcasm, he started to look very pleased at the thought of proving to the guild mistresses that he was more skilled than Risa. Also, the mage from Lamia Scale thought about how defeating Hiyasu would be a fantastic way of impressing Juvia. She had been missing Gray, who had mysteriously disappeared for quite a while now, but Lyon would want to heal Juvia's broken heart. He didn't like the sight of her being sad when she was upset at Kotomi on the first day, but he felt determined to help her feel happiness after he had seen remnants of frost on her unconscious body.

Sherria hadn't healed Juvia, due to Kaitōtīru already defrosting her, and the Sky God Slayer couldn't stop Lyon from carrying Juvia to the Cerulean Frost guild's infirmary in a bridal-style manner. Sherria actually expressed some feelings of jealousy towards that situation, since she was envious that Lyon cared so much for Juvia intead of viewing Sherria as his true soulmate. She had overheard him wanting to battle Emiria or Hiyasu tomorrow, but Sherria had a miffed look on her face as her eyes displayed annoyance at how Lyon was likely doing it for Juvia.

She wondered how Lyon would've fared today if he had been Hiyasu's opponent instead of it being Risa's day to fight, and sensing high amounts of magic from the ice garden for hours had made Sherria sigh in a slightly frustrated manner with her eyes closed. If Lyon wasn't careful or fought without her by his side, Sherria assumed that he'd be down on the ground with his face in a deep puddle. She would definitely have to heal Lyon, since he had no healing spells in his arsenal, but Sherria felt curious about if she would also have to battle tomorrow.

"If Lyon is fighting against Emiria or Hiyasu, do I necessarily need to be there? Furthermore, could we have the fight near the Frigid Temple's entrance where the air seems to flow better from the stairs that lead to the-" Sherria asked Suzuna with a soft smile on her face as she hoped to fully understand the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour's rules, only for Suzuna to sternly interrupt her in the middle of speaking.

Suzuna explained in a strict tone of voice, as she started glaring at Sherria in an offended manner with coldness in her eyes, "Sorry, but you don't get to pick which area is suitable for a fight! Emiria and Hiyasu are the hostesses, and it's best for the environment to suit either one of their strengths! They've had to move an afternoon fight to tomorrow morning, which makes it be three battles all on the festival's fifth day! You can wait for day six to come around, but I'll kindly ask you to stay out the museum's important areas!"

"I'm sorry." Sherria apologetically responded with an ashamed look appearing on her face, not intending to get Suzuna upset.

She soon saw Suzuna turn around to walk out of the ice garden, noticing her cyan blue vest top with dark blue trim on the bottom that was shaped like six-branched snowflakes while the vest top exposed the undersides of her breasts. Suzuna also wore a dark blue bow with a rhombus-shaped aqua blue gem in its center, and the gem complimented the mid-length celestial blue dress that she wore underneath the vest top. The dress had the design of light blue icicles aimed upward on the bottom half of it, and the icicles fashionably went well with the turquoise blue miniskirt that had been under her dress. The miniskirt itself had the design of a frosty blizzard's winds on it, and the miniskirt had cobalt blue edges that were in a snowball pattern. The edges of the miniskirt complimented Suzuna's neon blue shoes, which had their heels in the shape of spiraling water twisters.

Suzuna simply walked out of the ice garden in a fashionable manner like a model who walked off of a runway, and she briefly turned around to look at Lucy and Risa for a moment. She was very glad that her lessons from the other day proved to be very useful, as they did manage to help the girls defeat Emiria and Hiyasu. Despite Juvia's loss, Suzuna was very happy that progress was being made in the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour. There were now three strong mages who could be useful allies, which made Suzuna smile in a pleased manner. Although, glancing at Sherria for a moment caused Suzuna to softly smile before turning around to make her lips form a scheming smirk.

She maintained that expression while walking on the grass to leave the ice garden, but the sound of some snow lightly falling from a tree to hit the ground made Suzuna turn around for a moment to see Kusabue forming the shamrock green aura around her hands to absorb those sound waves. That caused Suzuna to frown and briefly think about how Kusabue and Kūkiatsu fought against Kaisui and Kōsui in a battle on the previous day, but that battle was unofficial. Neither of the wealthy twins had been in charge of any battles during the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour, and the Sabertooth mages weren't even invited to participate. However, Kūkiatsu was now observing the damaged plants to gather visual data on which specific winter plants needed to be healed through research while Kusabue was carefree in absorbing magic. Therefore, Suzuna proceeded to walk out of the ice garden while she returned to smirking in a scheming manner that pertained to giving the siblings an interesting reward for their victory.

---

How was Chapter 51? Feel free to tell me your thoughts on it. Due to this arc's length that had been planned last year, this chapter was intended to be long. Lucy has finally won her battle against Emiria, and Risa has managed to defeat Hiyasu! Not only have the girls defeated their rivals, but they'll definitely get to see why the festival's final day is very special! Also, Samui's plot line with Risa has provided development for both of these characters. As for Sting, he'll get more character development in the next chapter when he helps Lucy clear up a misunderstanding. This arc is also the one where I wanted to see if I could make the Lyon x Juvia pairing be cute in any way. Anyway, this is the eighth part of the Azure Ice Arc! I'll update soon. :)

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