Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail.
Chapter 53: The Frosty Prison of Seigan! Mysterious Ice Puzzles & Chilling Artwork! Hidden Evidence & Hinted Directions!
When Lucy and Sting were near Seigan Town's theme park, they were approached by Risa and Rogue. Risa panted heavily from how she had been looking for them throughout the entire town, and she started to give Sting a serious look that was pertinent to some important information. The earlier conversation with Yukino allowed Risa to learn the shocking news that Kusabue found an underground prison beneath this town, along with a missing researcher who mysteriously wasn't around when the Sabertooth mages stopped the perfume pandemic on a previous adventure.
Risa recalled how it had been possible to break into the research lab from an accessible entrance, which led her to believe that a legitimate entrance to the underground prison had to be somewhere in this town. Before she could starting walking away to go look for it, Rogue gently grabbed Risa's right hand and looked at her with a stern facial expression that warned her about how the group needed to be more cautious from this point onward in the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour. Just because specific battles were finished, that didn't mean the mages from Sabertooth could lower their guard.
From Rogue's perspective, there was the possibility that the wizards who weren't participating could get into serious trouble for unauthorized access to certain parts of this town. They were already walking on thin ice, due to Kaisui and Kōsui being nobles who were attacked by the tourists known as Kūkiatsu and Kusabue. Emiria hadn't been happy with that fight, and the two young siblings were mainly saved by Kagura intervening on their behalf. Since people coming in from faraway towns couldn't just do whatever they wanted, carefully moving around Seigan was the right thing to do.
Being careful certainly did involve the step of finding the prison's entrance, but it seemed like the idea of searching for it in caverns with restrictive ice walls would be foolish. Rogue started to widen his eyes with the feeling of realization, concluding that the entrance to the prison was above the underground caverns, and the fact that an icy floor had been wrecked as a way of accessing a place to observe the prison meant that there had to be ice related to the normal way of getting into that frigid place where the prisoners were located.
"Sting, we have reasons to believe that some shady activities are happening in this town. Specifically, it seems like they're originating from beneath Seigan and we need to investigate these matters." Rogue told his friend in a serious tone, as he started to look concerned.
His words prompted Sting to glance over at the explosions from Lyon and Sherria's fight against Emiria and Hiyasu in the forest, before facing Rogue with a stern facial expression, "If Emiria organized this entire event and needed that giant gemstone, I'm curious about why she didn't have any security guards in that part of the caverns."
Lucy asked her friends with a serious facial expression, thinking about the end goal of this festival, "Also, have you noticed that Emiria and Hiyasu don't fight anyone in the underground caverns? Do you think that these fights take place around different parts of Seigan Town solely for no one to have their eyes on what's going on in specific places like those caverns?"
Lucy's questions caused Sting and the other wizards to start directing their eyes at the different landmarks of Seigan Town, including the theme park that had attractions involving ice or water. Rogue began to walk back to the street where Yukino and Kusabue were located, as a certain landmark piqued his interest, and Risa softly smiled as she followed him. With Risa and Rogue looking for clues in one section of the town, that left Lucy and Sting with the mutual decision of going into the theme park.
They wasted no time with going to one of the rightmost paths in the theme park, and the mages soon reached a Tiffany blue house that had a wide pitched roof in a cobalt shade of blue. After opening the wooden door, Lucy noticed that this room had royal blue carpeting and azure blue walls. The walls complimented the glacial blue ice blocks that were rectangular while they were either horizontally or vertically placed to display paintings of either Emiria or Hiyasu unleashing various spells from their arsenals.
Touching one painting that featured Emiria caused Lucy to see a spiraling beam of light blue frost emerge from it when her right hand, but the ice that touched her hand quickly broke apart like glass. The broken ice turned out be harmless ice shards, which quickly turned into diamond dust. Diamond dust was also seen by Sting, who went to the right side of the attraction, and he had placed his hand in front of a painting where Hiyasu shot out bubbles from her hands. Interestingly, bubbles emerged from the portrait for a few seconds before they ended up bursting to create azure blue diamond dust. Sting's eyes glanced away from the diamond dust to see what appeared to be a mirror at the back of this room, prompting him to walk up to it.
"Lucy, do you mind telling me why an art gallery in a theme park would have a cold mirror?" Sting asked his teammate with a perplexed facial expression, his eyes noticing the frost emerging from the rectangular mirror.
That prompted Lucy to respond with a confused look on her face, as she looked over at Sting to see the nearby frost, "I wouldn't exactly call it a mirror, since it's made of ice. Although, I do have to wonder why it's there."
"Let's just see if there's more paintings behind this block of ice." Sting stated with a confident look on his face, as he sensed that there was a hidden secret.
Sting activated White Drive, which made a white aura of Light Dragon Slayer Magic engulf his body, and Sting built up magical power in his left hand. In a few seconds, a white sphere of light was in his left hand and the sphere grew larger as Sting sent magical power into it. When the sphere was much larger than his hand, Sting unleashed his attack known as Holy Nova. He slammed the sphere against the ice, hearing a massive explosion while a large white blast blinded Lucy's eyes, but Sting focused the entirety of the attack's power on the ice that would be broken.
The blast quickly faded away to reveal that the ice had been destroyed, chunks of it scattered across the floor, and it had actually been wedged in a doorway that it had been concealing. Sting went through the doorway with Lucy, and they were both surprised that this room didn't contain any paintings. Instead, they noticed that the center of this room contained a round table that was in a royal blue color. The table had been several feet away from the ice block, keeping it out of an obvious glance.
However, being in this room now allowed Lucy to see that a sapphire blue piece of paper was on the table while it rested next to some Mint Frost Roses that were in a small dark blue vase. Lucy gently slid the vase near the table's edge, and she picked up the paper. When reading the information, Lucy narrowed her orange eyes in a stern manner while her frown expressed the feeling of discomfort. Sting stood next to her, and he widened his eyes in shock from seeing that the paper resembled an essay of past research conducted with a theory on where to find the legendary rings. Below the essay's final paragraph, there was a photograph of the sixth ring that Lucy would need to acquire, and the photo framed the ring to be on the hand of someone who was frozen in ice. Although, Sting quickly overcame his feelings of being surprised while he felt as interested as Lucy about why someone seemingly kept this paper in a place that looked more suspicious than the ice-covered art gallery.
Meanwhile, at a branching path in Seigan Town...
Rogue noticed the suspicious nature regarding light blue rock with seven white icicles surrounding it, and he thought that the landmark seemed very strange. The rock was on one side of the branching path while the museum was on the other side, but Rogue looked curious as to why this rock that resembled an artifact hadn't been part of the museum's exhibits. It looked like a sacred landmark that needed to be protected, but Rogue sensed that there was something odd about the giant rock and its surrounding icicles.
He walked off of the street to be on the snowy path that was in front of some of the icicles, and going up to one of them allowed Rogue to sense that those icicles were made from the same kind of Ice Goddess Slayer Magic that was wielded by Emiria. Upon closely looking at ice, Rogue took notice of the light blue aura that was heavily flowing upward through the icicles for it to thickly surround them. When Rogue attempted to lightly touch an icicle with his finger, the ice quickly made his finger be encased in frost that instantly changed into being a frigid chunk of ice.
Therefore, it seemed like only long-range spells were capable of shattering the ice. That observation prompted Rogue to use the Shadow Dragon's Roar spell, and he unleashed an extremely large vortex of black shadows from his mouth. The large and spiraling vortex of shadows quickly made contact with the giant icicle, resulting in the sight of a black blast, and black clouds of smoke filled the street. Rogue could faintly see through the smoke, and he frowned in a calm manner from seeing that the icicle had been destroyed.
The destruction of the icicle made one-seventh of the giant rock start to glow with light blue beams of energy being emitted from it, and Rogue unleashed a new spell called Shadow Dragon's Shadow Hex Blade. He aimed his hands at the plentiful amount of shadows on the ground that belonged to the smoke clouds, and moving his hands upwards allowed Rogue to make several sharp and long black blades of swords rise up from the shadows. The swords were black silhouettes, giving them the appearance of shadows, and they moved forward after Rogue thrusted his arms forward. As the swords plunged themselves into two icicles and quickly detonated to create large blasts, Rogue noticed two more portions of the giant rock starting to glow.
"What kind of stone is this?" Rogue asked aloud in a curious manner, as he started eating shadows of the ice chunks that fell on to the snow.
Kusabue responded to him with a nice smile on her face, "The light from it is very pretty, Rogue."
"Even if the stone looks pretty, let's see what happens if we break all the ice." Risa told Kusabue in a relaxed tone, as she built up magical power in her hands.
Risa unleashed the spell known as Cosmic Psi, and she created a light pink sphere in her right hand. Upon sending more magical power into her hand for it to be engulfed in a light pink aura, Risa's sphere was surrounded by a larger sphere that was also light pink. She threw the attack at one of the remaining icicles, resulting in a light pink blast that was quite large to where more icy winds were blowing through Seigan Town, and Risa's body was engulfed in a pink aura to signify that her level of power increased as a side effect of the spell.
The increase in power caused Risa to activate her magenta-colored Psychic Magic, and she unleashed the spell called Gleaming Magenta Psi Aurora. Risa created a pink sphere in her left hand, before sending a high amount of Psychic Magic down into her feet, and Risa ran up to one of the remaining icicles. She watched the sphere become large enough to engulf her entire body, before stretching out her arms in opposite directions to unleash the spell in several magenta waves of psychic energy, and the energy waves of Psychic Magic had been quite large.
When they made contact with the remaining icicles, the psychic waves created magenta explosions and smashed through the ice! The ice went in several directions, causing Kusabue to move very quickly during her instances of dodging ice chunks. Kusabue's hands were stretched out to absorb the sound waves pertinent to the winds that resulted from the explosions, as well as the sounds of ice breaking apart and landing on the ground. Yukino took notice of her friend's shamrock green aura, before noticing that all of the icicles were destroyed for the entire rock to be shining in a light blue color.
"Risa-sama, did you just solve a puzzle?" Yukino asked her friend with curiosity entering her hazel eyes.
Risa replied with a calm facial expression, as she examined the giant rock that was immensely glowing, "The rock's brightness after breaking all those icicles means that we solved some kind of riddle, but nothing around the rock stands out to me now."
"Well, the same can't be said for what's underneath it!" Risa exclaimed in a startled manner, after accidentally kicking a chunk of ice against the rock for it to start moving backwards on its own for a path to be revealed.
Upon seeing a square hole with a dark blue staircase inside of it, Rogue told Kusabue with a stern facial expression, "Go find Sting and Lucy, since they need to see that we just uncovered an interesting path. Risa will accompany me down the stairs, and Yukino may need to stand guard if Emiria or Hiyasu asks why this puzzle was solved."
Rogue proceeded to walk down the stairs with Risa following him, and Kusabue followed them. That left Yukino with the decision of walking up to the rock for the purpose of guarding the entrance, only to widen her eyes in a stunned manner from sensing a familiar presence. This person had been missing from Yukino's life for a long duration of time, but she couldn't believe that they were down in the icy prison. She also sensed a second familiar presence, one that she actually recognized from the five-month period when everyone had gone their separate ways.
As Yukino felt compelled to go down into the darkness associated with the staircase, Lucy ran down the nearby street with the dark blue paper in her hands. She wanted to show it to her other teammates, who let her see the image of the moved landmark as a symbol that they found the next route for her and Sting to explore. Before they walked towards the glowing rock and the staircase, Lucy and Sting noticed that Kūkiatsu had left his work involved with researching plants in the ice gardens to just observe how there was a strange trail of footprints leading into Seigan Town's museum.
Not only did the footprints mysteriously go through the snow-covered grass in front of the botanical nursery, but Kūkiatsu was just as observant as Lucy towards the fact that this singular trail of footprints looked recent. Kūkiatsu glanced up from the footprints to see Lucy, who looked back at him with a puzzled facial expression like they were detectives who were trying to solve different aspects of a case. The green-haired teenager lightly walked on the snow leading to the museum, careful to not step anywhere near the footprints, and he briefly opened the pockets of his mint green jacket to see if they would have enough room for any possible clues. Since Kūkiatsu would investigate the museum, that left Lucy and Sting with following their other teammates down the stairs.
10 minutes later, in the underground path...
Rogue and Risa finished walking down the staircase, and the two mages walked through an icy cavern that was a straight path. This path didn't differ from the appearance of the other caverns in any major ways, even having a mirror made of ice at the end of the path. Upon seeing the icy mirror, Risa wasted no time with unleashing the spell called Shadowy Psychic's Psychokinetic Magenta Scream. She fired a large burst of spiraling psychic energy from her mouth while Risa's attack was magenta pink, and the spell struck the ice to create a magenta-colored blast!
The loud sound of the blast was absorbed by Kusabue, who stretched out her hands, and she absorbed the sound waves of the ice loudly cracking multiple times. When the mirror of ice finished breaking apart, the team noticed that a cavernous hole leading into another room was now accessible. That prompted Rogue to quietly use hand gestures for the purpose of motioning for Risa, Kusabue, and everyone else to follow him. The group walked down the underground path, noticing small gemstones embedded in the ice walls, and the light blue brightness of the cavern up ahead made Rogue wonder if light was reflecting off of ice.
He was correct about that assumption, as spells of Ice Magic from an upper walkway were fired down at large rocks to create light blue explosions that blinded the eyes of the newest women who were immediately fitted with collars made from glacial ice while their hands and feet were also fitted with shackles. Upon seeing the women become enslaved while a female jailer with light blue hair purposely rattled the collars for them to start their countdowns of ticking time bombs, Kusabue looked enraged at how someone could be as evil as Kaisui.
Since a jailer wanted to be as vicious as a wealthy slave owner, Kusabue activated a spell called Sound Wave Entrapment. She aimed her hands at the jailer while firing a shamrock green aura that headed straight for her opponent, and Kusabue watched the aura engulf the woman in a sphere. The sneaky attack made the jailer who wore sunglasses be quite shocked, only to be struck with sound waves that detonated within the bubble while they contained Kusabue's screams of rage. This spell made sound waves be in the aura that would surround an opponent, before they would explode in powerful shamrock green blasts that dealt damage to whoever was in the sphere, and the sphere itself exploded in a much larger shamrock green blast.
"Well, that worked better than I thought." Kusabue happily stated, as she noticed that the loudness and power of the explosions shattered the icy collars before they could stop the countdown.
The shamrock green beams of light that were now fading away prompted another female guard to shout in an alarmed, "Intruder! Notify the Cerulean Frost guild's S-Class mages that we have a breach at the entrance!"
"I won't allow that!" Lucy sternly stated with a fierce facial expression, before immediately activating Kaze's Feather Dance.
After the mint green wings fell down in front of Lucy's waist, she felt her body become much lighter and weightless to where she could jump up high enough to reach the prison's second floor. When Lucy reached the second floor, she ran towards the guards at high speeds while activating the spell known as Zephyr Punch. An emerald green aura engulfed Lucy's right fist, before she aggressively punched one of the female guards in the face, and seeing the alarmed guard who called for help only made Lucy send magical power into her right fist.
Lucy attempted to strike that woman at high speeds, only to see her swiftly dodge the attack by applying Ice Magic to her feet, and that made Lucy feel like using a little new strategy. By simultaneously implementing her two spells that were active, Lucy started punching the air at rapid speeds! She punched the air in front of the guard, who looked confused at Lucy's actions. However, she soon became startled from seeing Lucy's fists become coated in the high amount of air that encircled them. That allowed Lucy to strike the guard in the chest with the enhanced Zephyr Punch spell, sending the woman flying several feet backwards to where she crashed through an ice wall, and Lucy struck her with a punch that had as much force as hitting someone with an extremely dense cyclone.
The guard coughed up some blood while Lucy heard some bones sound like they just broke, and the gale of wind resulting from the guard's impact with the ice wall prompted Lucy to use the spell called Tempest Tornado Bounce. Lucy fired five emerald green tornadoes from her left hand, aiming them at the pair of guards who stood on the other side of the icy walkway, and the tornadoes headed straight for the enemies before circling around them. Lucy rapidly spun around in a circle to generate more wind, before thrusting her arms forward to send the air towards the tornadoes.
As the tornadoes gained more wind and grew in size, one of the female guards narrowed her celestial blue eyes and shouted, "I won't let you finish that attack!"
"If that's the case, then I won't let you start your spell!" Kusabue shouted up at that guard, before applying Sound Magic to her feet for the purpose of jumping up very high.
Kusabue shouted fiercely with a shamrock green aura surrounding her body, before she put her hands close together, "Resounding Vibration Bomb!"
She wasted no time with loudly clapping her hands five times in succession, which caused shamrock green sound waves to emerge from her palms. The sound waves struck the icy ceiling, resulting in pale blue stalactites falling while the tornadoes sprang upward. When the stalactites hit the icy walkway, they slightly impaled the floor while mildly cracking it. Although, the fact that they landed around the guards proved to be an effective method of preventing one of them from immediately activating a spell of Ice Magic.
The other guard made a light blue aura engulf her hands for the purpose of absorbing the Ice Magic within the stalactites, only for Lucy's tornadoes to quickly descend from the air and detonate! The emerald green blasts occurred around the guards, causing them to scream in pain while the five blasts had been enormous, and the strong amount of power damaged the walkway to the point of making half of it fall down to the lower level of the prison. Sting smiled in a confident manner as he decided to use the falling rubble to his advantage by jumping up from piece to piece of debris, and he quickly reached the remains of the walkway.
He turned away from Lucy for a moment to see that a small ice-covered staircase led up to a long and rectangular platform that had been covered in thick sheets of snow. The snow was in front of a row of cells on the side facing Sting, and there were also cells on the platform behind him. He glanced at the rectangular jail cells that had frozen wizards in them, and the frost that was being emitted from the iron bars appeared to be in a light blue color. Sting walked up the stairs to get near the cells, and the cold temperature of the frost had been frigid enough to also freeze the keyholes of the cells.
Since the prison cells on the first floor were just as frozen as the ones on the upper level, Risa smiled in a confident manner as an idea occurred in her mind. She created the pink orb for the Esper Ball in her left hand while putting that hand next to her left hand, and Risa fired a spiraling beam of Psychic Magic. The beam alternated between the colors of regular pink and magenta pink while it headed straight for a locked jail cell, and Risa watched the attack explode after making contact with its target.
The jail cell's door was obliterated as a pink explosion occurred, and the explosion left behind several magenta pink flames. These flames stood alongside flames that were in the normal shade of pink, but all of the flames generated a high amount of heat to where the two frozen female wizards in the cell started to be defrosted. The ice around them rapidly melted, causing both of the women to blink their eyes in a startled manner from seeing that they were in a jail cell, but they quickly ran out of that room after Risa motioned for them to leave.
Risa picked up some magenta pink flames while activating the spell called Psychotic Magenta Psi, and she created a two-layered magenta pink sphere in her right hand. Risa threw it at the nearest jail cell, causing a magenta explosion to occur while it had been quite large, and the explosive attack produced more magenta pink flames. By using Stellar Psi and aiming her right hand at some of the flames, Risa made several barrages of flames strike more jail cells. The guards were too distracted by the fiery explosions that were occurring alongside the presences of flames that needed to be extinguished, and they couldn't stop more prisoners from getting defrosted.
As the prisoners wasted no time with running towards the icy prison's entrance, the guards who wore dark blue Cossack hats and dark blue winter coats couldn't easily produce low-level spells of Ice Magic that would simply freeze the entrance to the cavern. When they tried to activate their Ice Magic, the icicles would comically melt down into water from being in a place where a hefty amount of heat was being produced by flames. The female guards watched the flames in Risa's left hand gain enough heat to where she slammed them against another cell's door, which resulted in a certain woman with light blue hair immediately going to the back of the room as a way of preventing herself from getting hit by the rubble from the explosion.
"Well, I suppose you'll want me to thank you for that." The woman with long hair and somewhat tan skin told Risa with a somewhat rude smirk on her face, feeling glad that the explosion's heat was melting the frost off of her skin.
Risa responded calmly while looking concerned about the icy collar on the woman's neck, as well as the shackles on her wrists and ankles, "You can thank me later, but we first need to free you from those restraints!"
"Maybe this new spell can do it!" Kusabue happily stated aloud, as she comically ran from the nearby guards during her moments of picking up two large pieces of ice shards that they shot out from their hands earlier in the day.
Risa and the shackled woman looked very surprised from seeing Kusabue create a shamrock green aura in her hands to the extent of making the light blue ice shards have a light green color, and Kusabue turned to the face the shackled prisoner right before loudly screaming at the ice shards. Before the guards could retrieve their ice shards, Kusabue slammed them together to create a shamrock green aura that went outward in the form of a circle. The green aura contained an echoing sound wave of Kusabue's loud scream, and the sound wave was powerful enough to break through the woman's icy collar and shackles.
The ice on the unopened jail cells also broke apart like glass loudly hitting the floor, resulting in some of the female guards being very startled. They took their eyes off of the mayor and some other prisoners who were still frozen on the second floor, ignoring that the ice on their bodies began to crack, and the fire's heat reached up to that elevated floor. Although, that didn't stop Risa from activating Stellar Psi and moving her hands upward to make some of her magenta flames go up to the remains of the walkway. That prompted Rogue to activate Shadow Drive, which caused a black aura of shadows to surround his body, and he briefly turned into a black shadow for the purpose of appearing behind different guards who were trying to supervise prisoners. Rogue knocked out the guards with his Shadow Dragon's Roar attack while the black blast destroyed some rocks that the prisoners needed to break, and Kusabue sent Sound Magic into her feet before jumping upward from a small rock to reach the left side of the prison.
That prompted Risa to use Stellar Psi on herself, levitating upward to watch Kusabue's back, and the young girl walked up the small staircase to be in front of the jail cells. She walked all the way to the rightmost cell on the end, seeing the Head Botanist who had her long hair in a regular shade of green while having the hairstyle of curtain bangs falling near her neon green eyes, and Kusabue gently rattled the cell to get her attention. As the prisoner got up and also wore her dark green lab coat over her blouse that was in the shade of pear green, she put on her glasses that had basil green frames.
After walking to the cell door and adjusting her glasses, the woman politely asked while looking curious, "Kusabue, is that you? Aren't you the younger sister of that kid who was doing research for me? Why are you in this type of place?"
Those questions caused Kusabue to respond with a stern facial expression, as she sent Sound Magic into her hands for the aura to engulf them, "Dr. Nashihana, my friends and I are from the Sabertooth guild, and we're here to save you."
"Oh, that's understandable. Well, please free me and help me get out of this icy prison. Imagine having to do research for countless hours, only to not see one jewel after being employed." She kindly replied to Kusabue, before beginning to look saddened about her current predicament.
As Kusabue aggressively punched the jail cell's bars and heard waves of sound reverberate, the immediate explosions in a shamrock green color surprised Dr. Gardenia Nashihana. She hadn't expected Kusabue and her unpredictable Sound Magic to be developed up to this level of power, which caused her to be more amazed at Kusabue's level of control over her magic, and the researcher pulled out a sea green notepad with a dark green pen for the purpose of making some observational notes. She planned on getting some important notes from the nearby lab, however, and Gardenia ran out of the jail cell.
Kusabue wasted no time with running after her, as she wanted to see the specific kind of research that was being conducted. She recalled her own hometown being involved with some research regarding the town of Seigan, but the exact memory wasn't coming back to Kusabue right now. It only appeared as a faint thought, which had been formed when Gardenia adjusted her glasses. The familiarity of that memory escaped Kusabue's mind, but she decided to just ignore it for now and discuss it later with Kūkiatsu and her other teammates.
That included Risa, who was just smiling softly in an impressed manner as she ran after Kusabue and Gardenia. Risa liked the fact that this rescue mission was pushing Kusabue to use more abilities pertaining to her Sound Magic, and seeing how Kusabue cleverly used her spells in strategic ways really made Risa feel glad that this rescue mission stemmed from Kusabue being sent down here earlier on a retrieval mission that was given by Suzuna. Although, the sheer fact that a mission was given to a tourist by an S-Class mage who was supposed to also be Cerulean Frost's greeter girl did cause Risa to begin thinking about the puzzling atmosphere involved with that situation.
In contrast, Yukino observed the situation of the prison break and made the obvious choice of pulling out Libra's golden key from the left pocket of her winter coat. Yukino summoned the black-haired spirit, before softly commanding her to alter the gravity around the unopened jail cells on the right side of the prison. Libra moved her hands around in a psychic manner, before making the scales shift from one side to the other, and Gravity Magic in a dark shade of purple appeared around the doors of the jail cells.
The immense amount of gravity pulled them off of the cells, unhinging those doors, and Yukino softly smiled at her actions. She continued to smile while glancing down at the floor, noticing that all of the blasts and commotion allowed some of the excavated crystals of ice from earlier to be scattered across the floor. Yukino looked at one of the light blue gemstones, before taking out the brown bag of light blue coins from her coat's right pocket, and Yukino had an idea. She picked up the light blue gemstone for the purpose of putting it in the bag, only to see it shine in a light blue color before turning into several coins with the number 50 on their tails sides.
Yukino was surprised at the sight of more coins appearing in her bag, as she recalled that the fight from Harui expended her Icy Fimbulvetr Magic to where only one coin remained, but the light blue gemstone reacted to the properties of her magic after making contact with the coin. Upon seeing the result, Yukino realized that the gemstones being dug up by prisoners weren't intended to be ordinary stones. These were magic stones that seemed to primarily be capable of powering up Ice Magic, and Yukino felt like she needed to find more of them.
She had a calm look in her hazel eyes from seeing that two of them were near the middle of this part of the prison, prompting Yukino to run over to them, but she was met with the sight of a woman who recently became free from her second time of being enslaved. The woman watched Yukino pick up the two gemstones in one hand, seeing her gasp in shock as the stones merged together to form a larger gem, and putting that gem in the bag only made it become a high abundance of light blue coins. Yukino put the bag back in her winter coat, before standing up straight to look at the woman in front of her, and Yukino's gasp from earlier became much louder.
"You... You're...!" Yukino exclaimed with a shocked facial expression, her eyes expressing the feeling of disbelief as she recognized the woman's face.
The woman responded in a calm manner, inadvertently making Lucy look startled from recognizing her voice, "I'm no one that you know."
Yukino stated loudly, her eyes looking stern as she chose to argue against that claim, "You're Sorano, my sister! Sorano Aguria!"
This woman wore a light blue bikini top that was covered in light blue feathers shaped like the wings of angels, and she also wore some light blue lacy underwear that had light blue angel feathers on its left and right sides. Sorano also wore high-heeled shoes that were cobalt blue, but the heels themselves resembled light blue angel wings. Sorano's clothes appeared as if they had been clean, which was actually only because of explosions from attacks creating wind that would dry them after the guards used Water Magic or Ice Magic to make Sorano be subjected to various kinds of torture.
One form of torture in a deeper part of this frigid prison involved pushing unfrozen prisoners down an icy cavern that led to a dense pit of ice, and the icy hole would get filled with spiraling vortexes of Water Magic as a way of seeing if shackled prisoners would either suffer injuries or end up drowning to death before the sadistic guards would rescue them. Sorano felt that it would be a waste of her time to go and deal with those guards again, but she was surprised by the sight of Risa going deeper into the prison for the purpose of using attacks such as Esper Ball and Extrasensory Psychic Soul Destruction for the purpose of taking out all those guards.
The guards in this room could only watch in fear from seeing the mayor and other prisoners run past them, some of them even trampling over a few guards on the first floor, and even people such as Flare Corona used Fire Magic to just create more fire in this room after the ice around them had melted. Sorano felt curious as to why Yukino was even here as a guard sneaked up behind her sister, only to be interrupted by the sight of Kotomi Takeuchi using Kaze's Feather Dance to jump down from the high walkway and aggressively punch the guard in the face to knock her out.
"Aren't you that notorious thief who wields Wind Magic? What are you doing in Yukino's guild, and why are you all even here?" Sorano asked her with a confused look on her face, before gently crossing her arms.
That prompted Lucy to nicely respond to the questions in reverse order, "We're just here to rescue a researcher who was being held down here. I'm in Sabertooth because of a quest where I must collect legendary rings, and I unfortunately look just like Kotomi Takeuchi because of her body-switching spell. I may have taken keys from you, Angel, but she ended up stealing them from me."
Upon hearing her former name, Sorano responded with a sly smirk on her face, "Wait, you're trying to say that you're Lucy Heartfilia and you got your body stolen! Wow, I'm set free from a prison and you're trapped in someone else's body. You must've been very pathetic in a fight for that happen."
"Well, I wasn't so pathetic when I saved your sister from a religious cult!" Lucy retorted with a somewhat annoyed look on her face, as Yukino lightly kept her at bay by putting a hand against Lucy's stomach.
When Lucy uttered that sentence, Sorano started to widen her purple eyes in a manner that displayed amazement. She felt very glad that Yukino didn't get herself in a situation where she needed to fully show loyalty to a cult leader who would want to make the teammates be their pawns, but hearing that Lucy was Yukino's savior almost made Sorano want to believe that the enemy must have been someone who Sorano could've taken down on her own if she had been the one who needed to rescue her younger sister.
Yukino calmly got her hand off of Lucy's stomach, before stepping aside for Lucy to display the five legendary rings that were on her hand. When Sorano saw the rings, she initially scoffed in a rude manner while thinking that they looked gaudy. That perception came from the rings supposedly not being as beautiful as Golden Zodiac Gate Keys like the ones Yukino wielded, but focusing her eyes on the Emerald Green Ring caused Sorano to look very stunned at how Lucy managed to get her hands on that particular ring.
Sorano recalled that the week where she was arrested in this town for mistaking the path to an ice-covered statue as a tourist attraction was the same week where an orange-haired man with a strand of hair going down the middle of his face had nearly been arrested three days prior. From what Sorano could recall, it had been illegal for tourists such as that man to go into a certain area of the museum that was protected by a staircase in the official art gallery. According to rumors that Sorano gathered from some locals who were kept as prisoners, something mentioning the Emerald Green Ring with its image depicted was at the end of the path that could be taken after going down that specific staircase.
Meanwhile, in Seigan Town's museum...
Kūkiatsu had been in the museum for an hour now, having gone past the empty reception area that was in an ocean blue color, and going up to the next floor was where the wind-wielding male would find light blue walls and a dark blue floor featuring a snowflake pattern in the tiles. This room led to four separate paths, one being in each major direction on a compass, and Kūkiatsu noticed that the snowy footprints were leading in the northern direction. The doorway above this path featured the design of snow near a glass case, which signified that Kūkiatsu would encounter exhibits involving icy or watery artifacts in display cases.
He followed the footprints into the exhibit, and Kūkiatsu noticed that they went all the way to a rectangular glass case that was near the back of the room. The footprints guided him to a glass case that specifically featured the Aquatic Blue Stone and the Glacial Blue Stone, but Kūkiatsu noticed that these artifacts weren't as popular as the duplicates of the Ice Stone and the Azure Stone that were in the center of this room. Those exhibits also had large light blue bows tied around the middle parts of the podiums, indicating to patrons that these exhibits were recently added to the museum.
That contrasted with the glass case that had Kūkiatsu's attention, and he simply looked at the contents while also examining the glass. There was nothing unusual about the glass, not even a sign of anyone making an effort to crack the glass or even move the case's lid out of place. Kūkiatsu simply looked puzzled about why the snow-covered footprints led him to this specific exhibit, prompting him to generate a small mint green vortex of Wind Magic in his left hand. Kūkiatsu gently held the vortex above a small crevice between two pieces of the case's glass, and this allowed him to essentially dust the inside of the exhibit for fingerprints.
Surprisingly, his smart method for dusting ended up producing no recent fingerprints. That further puzzled Kūkiatsu, and he simply turned away from the exhibit in a frustrated manner. He decided to walk out of this area of the museum's exhibits, before going to the eastern area that had a portrait of icicles above its doorway. As Kūkiatsu walked through the doorway and wanted to quell his frustration by looking at some paintings, an Eastern-looking woman with glossy purple hair walked into the same room with the different paths. She decided to follow the sound of his footsteps, thinking that either Emiria or Hiyasu would show up here if multiple mages made their magic be sensed.
"I just sensed a mild vibration of magic coming from here while I was passing by, but I only sense it faintly now. At least it doesn't seem like Kagura or Kotomi are in here, since other types of magic are strangely coming from underground." The woman quietly thought to herself, her facial expression displaying stoicism and relief.
Kukiatsu thought to himself in a calm manner, not minding that another museum patron came into the art gallery, "If those footprints aren't leading to some kind of major clue, then that doesn't help anyone in our group at all. On top of that, most museum patrons would make their soles not be dirtying up an important place such as this."
He ironically walked past a pale blue wall that had a portrait of red herons trying to survive in one of Seigan Town's blizzards, along with the painting of a red gem being sold for no amount of jewels like it was a worthless red herring while the eight blue gems around it were framed as being sold for higher prices. Kūkiatsu walked all the way to the left side of the art gallery, noticing that the paintings of Seigan Town in the wintertime were involving the town's appearance at night. That kind of artwork seemed interesting to Kūkiatsu, especially since there was a small ice statue of a woman in a painting where snow lightly fell in front of the Seigan Temple.
There was a painting of the Seigan Temple on an adjacent wall, prompting the teenager to walk over to it, but there was something odd about the painting. Aside from the artwork featuring the temple during the daytime while a woman with mint blue hair had her back facing the viewers of the painting, the snow that fell had been portrayed in an unusual way where it was diagonally falling to the left side. Kūkiatsu moved over to the right side of the painting, seeing that this side had nothing noticeable, and Kūkiatsu casually went into a small path that stood between two of the paintings.
The painting on its right side was some artwork depicting Ice-Make Magic that formed the pale blue picture frames for portraits while they were positioned against ice walls, and the middle picture frame had a light blue key made of ice in it. A keyhole was in the left picture frame, but the appearance of an Ice Flute in the right picture frame was interesting. The woman who had been following Kūkiatsu observed this specific painting, interpreting it as a series of directions, and the fact that this artwork had walls of snow bordering the path to the picture frames prompted the woman to follow Kūkiatsu down that small path.
"We respect the goddess by giving her an eternal slumber in ice, but we spurn her frigid hostility and the power of that ring. We allow the feelings to be infused with our Ice Goddess Slayer Magic, which will be effective in sealing away the goddess. Although, we understand that our six seals of restraint can be undone in the future. Therefore, we plead that the Blizzard's Song of Cold Winters In Hail never be played in the presence of that statue." Kūkiatsu read in a curious tone, as he saw the ominous painting.
A female's voice responded calmly, as someone else walked into the room, "Well, that goddess certainly didn't have devoted followers."
Kūkiatsu asked the woman with a startled look on his face, turning around to see her, "Who are you?"
"I'm Minerva Orland, and I'm a mage in the dark guild known as Hexing Enchantress. Who are you supposed to be?" The woman nicely replied, before calmly asking Kūkiatsu a question.
"I'm Kūkiatsu Hanasōgen, and I'm a mage in the Sabertooth guild. Since you're from a dark guild, I'm just assuming you're here for that event." Kūkiatsu kindly responded to Minerva, before glancing at her outfit.
She wore a dress that was in a royal shade of purple while this dress was revealing enough to where it exposed a fair amount of her cleavage, the sides of her torso and her left leg. The dress had lavender edges that were thin, along with orchid purple laces near Minerva's hips to hold up the dress. The front of Minerva's dress featured a seven hypno-like swirl patterns in a grape shade of purple right under her breasts, and the swirl patterns formed the shape of a triangle while one swirl was placed within the triangle. The swirl design was also featured on the area of the dress where Minerva's stomach was located, but the swirls that formed a triangle pattern were in a plum shade of purple. The plum-colored triangle pattern was upside-down with one swirl in the center, and Minerva wore a feathery mauve purple sash below the slit of the dress that exposed her waist. Minerva's guild insignia was lilac purple while the design was six eerie-looking flames forming a circle around the design of a woman's seductive-looking lilac eye, and Minerva's boots were in an eggplant shade of purple with pairs of sultry eggplant-colored eyes on the fronts of them.
As Kūkiatsu turned back around and unintentionally displayed the mint green guild mark of Sabertooth on his left hand, Minerva merely turned her head away from him to look at a small white statue of a woman that had shoulder-length hair in a bob style. Minerva noticed that this white statue was on a miniature pedestal, which was likely a reference to the goddess in the painting, but attempting to touch the statue with her left hand only made Minerva slightly get pushed back by a light blue force field that was in the form of a sphere as it appeared around the statue.
The force field emanated light blue beams of light for a moment, causing Kūkiatsu to take his eyes off of the painting that displayed the goddess causing havoc with a blue ring on her hand before the citizens sealed her away. He noticed that the tiny statue resembled the fearsome woman in the painting, but the statue was smiling instead of having a cold facial expression. Kūkiatsu felt curious about if the force field acted as a seal in its own way, prompting him to fire the spell known as Typhoon Tempest Arcwind from his left hand. Upon seeing the mint green cloud touch the statue's force field and change its color, Kūkiatsu softly smiled right before the collision made a mint green blast spread outward! The attack surprisingly didn't damage any paintings, as the cloud and its tornadoes created by air were sucked into the center of the force field, and the blast's power had been contained. The statue itself also remained undamaged, almost as if the force field was meant to just nullify the first spell that touched it. However, this didn't prevent the force field from fading away and making the plaque on the pedestal easy to see.
"This small statue has a barrier of Ice Goddess Slayer Magic that can only be removed by a strong attack. If the force field is no longer intact, proceed with caution. You have activated a switch that will take you down to where we worship the likeness of her who shall not be named, as she is a cruel goddess of ice. Please be warned that the twin statue can also be undone in this manner." Kūkiatsu read aloud in a serious tone, right before the art gallery experienced the loud sound of a nearby cobalt blue tile retracting into the floor for the purpose of revealing a staircase.
Upon seeing the staircase going down into the underground, Minerva rudely stated as she folded her arms and looked displeased, "If they're wasting their time with worshiping a fake statue modeled after the real one, I just hope it's not frigidly cold down there like in the caverns where all the tourists go sightseeing."
Kūkiatsu ignored Minerva's complaint and went down the dark blue stairs, noticing that the area at the bottom resembled a path in an ice cave. He quickly stepped on to the icy floor, which provided a minimal amount of traction to where Kūkiatsu made a mint green aura of Wind Magic engulf his feet as a way for him to skate across the ice without falling. Due to the aura, he could easily see where he was going in this dark cave. In contrast, Minerva created a rainbow-colored energy wave of Territory Magic in her right hand and she slowly followed him. On the way to the end of the path, Minerva groaned in frustration from sensing waves of high-level magic coming from the other side of the caverns. Minerva hoped to encounter either Emiria or Hiyasu down here, but sensing other kinds of magic that also seemed rare made her begin to evilly smirk at how she wanted to have all of the prizes that the hostesses were offering to the invitees of the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour.
10 minutes later, in the icy prison...
In contrast to Minerva's greed, Risa simply wanted to see the important research that Gardenia had been working on. The researcher guided Risa and Kusabue to a sapphire blue metal door that was situated in between the icy prison's jail cells and the hallway that involved methods of torturing prisoners, and the metal doors retracted into the left and right sides of the hexagonal doorway when the researcher went through it. The Sabertooth mages followed her into the room, and Kusabue gasped in an awestruck manner while her eyes were filled with curiosity.
This room contained a wooden desk in a navy blue color while the Research Lacrima Crystal on the desk's left side was cobalt blue. As the name implied, the Research Lacrima Crystal allowed Gardenia to look up research articles on specific plants that were native to Seigan Town. The six Lacrima Vision screens that appeared in midair allowed Risa and Kusabue to see that Gardenia had been hired to conduct research on combining the plants that were infused with Ice Magic, since hybrid plants could be produced by planting their seeds together in the fertile soil.
Gardenia rubbed downward on the Research Lacrima Crystal, which allowed the wizards to see that the sales for hybrid flowers had been increasing. The sales reports were part of Gardenia's research studies, since her boss didn't want to sell plants that weren't profitable. For example, snowy leaves and light blue tulips only produced blue tulips that would make snowballs be shot upward when they fully bloomed. The boss perceived that specific hybrid to be a mediocre idea, since there was nothing that made that hybrid stand out from ones that were more appealing.
The hybrid that currently garnered the most sales had been the leaves from Iced Acacias being mixed with Oceanic Lillies, as the fusion created beautiful blizzards that took the form of light blue glitter, and the tourists had been purchasing them in a deep area of the ice garden today. Risa carefully read the screen that claimed that the current salesperson was Hisame Glacehail, who had invited the Sabertooth mages to the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour, but Risa rubbed the Research Lacrima Crystal slightly upward to see that the flowers exclusive to Seigan had been exported out to other towns in the past five months. Since this was the first month where the newest and most popular plants were being sold in Seigan during the convenient timing of a tourist-attracting event, Risa started to have a curious look on her face.
"There are several shops and concession stands where flowers and plants can be sold, but the merchandise from this town was never marketed and promoted so heavily until this event. These people changed the ways that Seigan makes money, but the timing of the adapting is suspiciously quick and perfect." Risa thought to herself in a calm manner, as she took her hand off of the orb.
Kusabue asked Gardenia with a nice smile on her face, as she walked over to the right side of the room that featured a navy blue bookcase, "What about the Frost Blue Roses? Dr. Nashihana, are they still popular after what had happened back in my hometown?"
That question prompted Gardenia to respond with a saddened look on her face, thinking about the circumstances, "Unfortunately, the boss wants them to be Seigan-exclusive flowers now. Yaeko never reported back to the boss on analyzing the chemical compounds for Frost Blue Roses, so finding the perfect flowers to fuse with for profits would be difficult, Also, I was informed that all the recent research I had done for Plant Magic and Wind Magic in aromatherapy ended up creating perfumes that became a devastated business."
Upon hearing Yaeko's name, Kusabue began to widen her eyes in a shocked manner from remembering how that name belonged to a researcher who treated her with a high amount of distaste. Risa also recalled that name, remembering how Yaeko was the researcher who she battled in the sky, and Yaeko had been the chemist of the group called the Green Meadow's Five Groves. That memory made Risa recall the fact of how she had heard Kūkiatsu tell Haruna that Yaeko had some information that needed to be analyzed, so Risa had a serious look in her eyes as she realized that chatting with him was now a task of high importance.
Speaking of tasks that were highly important, Kusabue felt that it was necessary for her to see if Gardenia kept any books related to how aromatherapy could be associated with perfumes. She sternly frowned at the sight of several books being in varying shades of blue while they were disorganized, and Kusabue felt that she needed to take some inspiration from Kūkiatsu. Since her brother was capable of being organized, Kusabue glanced down at the bottom row and started to sort the books by their different shades of blue from lightest to darkest.
When Kusabue pulled out the periwinkle book that was initially the sixth one from the left on this row of twelve books, she accidentally triggered a switch that made the bookcase rotate around to be facing the other side of this cavern. Additionally, the bookcase moved Kusabue into this new room and she looked very surprised from what had just happened. Risa and Grdenia were also surprised, the latter noticing that the periwinkle book on the revealed side of the bookcase had placed pressure on a dark blue piece of ice that was wedged under it by the person who had given Gardenia this specific room for research.
"Where am I now?" Kusabue asked aloud, as she looked around at the sapphire blue walls of ice that surrounded the icy floor.
She heard a familiar feminine voice say in the distance, sounding faint as it was behind the ice wall on the other end of this hallway, "It's here."
As Kusabue started to walk down the icy cavern, she asked with curiosity in her voice from seeing a small statue standing a few feet away, "What's that?"
Kusabue walked up to the white statue that had been on a round pedestal, seeing that it was a statue of a woman who seemed to be a goddess, and the strange location of the statue made Kusabue wonder why it had been down in a cold place. She exhaled some breaths of cold air, seeing her breath be white because of the frost involved with the coldness, but Kusabue lightly moved backwards from seeing a light blue force field of Ice Magic reveal itself to her. Kusabue built up a high amount of magical power in her right hand, before whistling down at it, and she aimed her hand at the force field.
When a shamrock green ring of energy emerged from her hand with thinner waves of energy coming from it, Kusabue watched this attack strike the force field to create an enormous blast! The blast's shamrock green color appeared, along with the force field absorbing the full power of the spell known as Amplified Whistle Wave, and the outer area of the blast had no harmful amount of power. Similarly, the force field nullified Kusabue's spell and the force field now had its color be shamrock green. Kusabue smiled at that, only to see the force field immediately fade away.
In a few seconds, the wall that Kusabue had been walking towards began to retract itself upward as if a puzzle was solved. Kusabue smiled in an amazed manner while lightly cheering in a happy tone. The sound of a passageway unlocking itself was exciting enough for Kusabue to lightly pull out the periwinkle book again, which only made Risa and Gardenia see the new cavern's path for a split second. Kusabue started to run down that path, the young girl feeling very eager to see what was awaiting her, and she simply applied Sound Magic to her feet as she slid down a light blue slope of ice. It led to a straight path that curved at the end, but this path featured dark blue patches of snow on the ground. Kusabue made sure to not step on them while she kept herself balanced on the ice, but she did look back at one footprint with the feeling of familiarity in her eyes from how she had seen that exact same footprint pattern earlier today in the caverns.
Concurrently, at the end of the path...
Kūkiatsu and Minerva reached the end of the icy path, and they ignored the secondary path that also led to this place. The location was a circular room with a silver tile floor while the floor itself started to have silver lights emanating up from it, and Kūkiatsu noticed how there were large statues in this room. Specifically, there were seven statues and each statue displayed a different goddess in their respective colors that strangely pertained to the rings. There were also colored paths respectively correlating to each goddess, which hinted that was likely a past time method for traveling between towns.
As Kūkiatsu glanced at the icy blue path, Minerva lightly nudged his arm to make his eyes focus on the giant light blue statue. Kūkiatsu walked up to the statue of the goddess, seeing it have the same appearance as the smaller statue in the art gallery, and the woman wore a high-collared royal kimono that had six diamonds engraved into the center of it. The sandals worn by the goddess had straps with torrential vortexes appearing to rise up from them, and her right hand was down by her hip while her left hand was weirdly positioned in front of her mouth.
The goddess wasn't holding any water in that hand, but it appeared as if she was supposed to be holding some kind of item. Kūkiatsu simply directed his eyes at the podium that was below the round pedestal, feeling intrigued at how the plaque was covered by snow that was in an azure blue color, and Kūkiatsu slowly started to wipe off all the snow. His hands immediately felt cold enough to where it had been like they were freezing in a blizzard, but he made small tornadoes of Wind Magic rapidly spin around in his hands to generate enough heat.
After warming up his hands and making the tornadoes vanish, Kūkiatsu wiped off more of the snow and the podium's plaque informed him that this goddess was interestingly the woman who blessed the Azure Ice Ring with her magic. The blessing towards that specific ring had allowed the goddess to infuse a high amount of her power into it, amplifying her own level of strength if she wore it during a battle, and Kūkiatsu wondered if that was the case for the other statues. Before he could walk over to the statue that was emerald green, Kūkiatsu was interrupted by the sound of familiar footsteps hurriedly coming down a branching path that led to this same route.
"Kusabue? What in the world are you doing here?" Kūkiatsu asked with a startled facial expression, not expecting to see his younger sister also on this secret and seemingly sacred path.
She responded in a calm manner while her eyes expressed the feeling of surprise from seeing him, "Onii-chan, I should ask you that. After freeing Dr. Gardenia Nahanashi from the icy prison, her bookcase flipped around. Then, I was curious enough to attack a statue's force field after I heard a familiar woman's voice in here."
As Minerva sternly shook her head in a manner of denial while disliking Kusabue's dark green hair, Kusabue asked Kūkiatsu with a serious look on her face, "Onii-chan, do you remember that woman named Yaeko? Would you be surprised to find out that Yaeko was supposed to give her boss an analysis of the perfume that was making people very sick?"
Kūkiatsu's face went from expressing happiness about Gardenia's release to expressing the feeling of confusion at how Yaeko was relevant. He looked at Kusabue, before letting his mind go back to the day that Risa killed Yaeko, and he silently frowned as the necessary memory came back to him with clearness. He had picked up a letter that had been in Yaeko's clothing, but only a small fragment of the letter was readable. The rest of it had been burnt up, along with the envelope. Although, the fact that the professor would probably be free to return to Ryokufū Town.
Kūkiatsu wondered if that would be true, since a prison break was probably something that Emiria couldn't tolerate. Although, he started to look puzzled at the fact that high-level magic being wielded by multiple mages in a prison infiltration would've definitely been strong enough to make either of the hostesses be alerted to the commotion. From Kūkiatsu's perspective, Kusabue not mentioning either of them was an oddity. Even during this Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour, security breaches were supposed to be halted by the hostesses or other S-Class mages.
That made him also think about the footprints that guided him into the museum, since someone with snow on their shoes walked in there like they were someone with a high level of authority. Kūkiatsu felt that it surprisingly couldn't have been Emiria, since a hustler such as her would've taken the items from that glass case if she was so interested in trading them for more powerful magic. In addition to that fact, Kūkiatsu thought that Emiria always fought somewhere with Hiyasu by her side. Therefore, the two sisters couldn't produce only one set of footprints that went nowhere.
"Minerva, did you also see the trail of footprints stopping at the glass case?" Kūkiatsu asked her in a calm manner, trying to fit the pieces together.
Kusabue interrupted in a kind manner, a nice smile forming on her face, "There have been footprints down in the snowy parts of the secret path I accessed, and there were footprints earlier today in the area near a barrier that lets you see the prison."
Those pieces of information caused Minerva to respond in a stoic manner, as she narrowed her eyes that expressed distaste at the situation, "It seems like you should learn to interpret the footprints as signs, if you're trying to solve a mystery. If you were casually led to certain places without finding any actual clues, you're likely being pawns on someone's chessboard."
Upon hearing a powerful explosion occur several meters above this underground place, Minerva began to lightly smirk in a rude manner from thinking that Emiria or Hiyasu finally finished a battle against one or two mages. Even if those battles were concluded, Minerva wouldn't let all the winners receive their prizes on the final day. She assumed that the winners were going to have items or magic be handed to them, which meant that she would probably need to search the Cerulean Frost guild for whatever awards were stashed away.
Minerva decided that her time in the frigid and cold underground caverns was gone, resulting in the green-eyed woman making an energy wave of Territory Magic surround herself as a way of quickly leaving this place. Kusabue decided to go back with Kūkiatsu on the route that he had taken to get here with Minerva, as her Sound Magic faintly detected a book being pushed into the bookcase's spot for it to flip back around to normal. Kusabue still felt that another person's presence was in this room, but she could only see a dark blue drip of water fall from a silver stalactite to touch the light blue statue.
After Kusabue hastily ran down the ice path with Kūkiatsu for them to share info about their different discoveries in the underground caverns, the moment that they were far enough away was the moment for a certain woman with light blue hair and celestial blue high heels to emerge from the stalactite. Suzuna fell down to the ground while making dark blue vortexes of Water God Slayer Magic engulf her feet to cushion her fall, and the moment that the vortexes faded away was when she smirked in a scheming manner. She let her eyes glance down at a cerulean blue flute that had light blue frost coming off of it, which meant the artifact was a Frost Flute, and Suzuna lightly smiled during her moment of smirking from how every step of her plan was perfectly calculated for the final day of the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour.
How was Chapter 53? Feel free to tell me your thoughts on it. Lucy and the other Sabertooth mages went down into the underground caverns, freed the Head Botanist from Ryokufū Town, and they also freed Sorano. Sorano has information that will be revealed later in the story, but the newly uncovered info regarding Seigan Town's goddess and the town's history is about to finally intertwine with Suzuna's scheming and the Grand Reverie Icy Frigid Tour. Furthermore, Emiria's hustling may prove to be useful. This is the tenth part of the Azure Ice Arc! I'll update soon. :)
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