Chapter 42: Fight inside the ruins

A short time later, the three of them had positioned themselves to the left and the right side of the ruins and just right out of the range of the blood beasts.

Zeldaris would attack from the left side, while Aversia and Erza would attack from the right side.

To Erzas surprise, Aversia and Zeldaris had taken of their hoodies and everything under them, except Aversia who still wore her bikini top. (AN: Didn´t know how to phrase this better.)

Aversia stretched out her hand and multiple fire balls appeared above it, Zeldaris was doing the same thing.

These fire balls were the size of a basketball and with only a slight movement of the hand where they sent flying toward the ruins.

As the fireballs came from both sides, the blood beasts noticed them almost instantly and alarmed their tamers of them.

But they were only able to identify the objects that were flying towards them when it was already too late.

*Boom* *Boom*

Multiple explosion rang out as the fireballs hit the ruins and the entire area fell into chaos.

Zeldaris, Aversia and Erza run toward the ruins.

Zeldaris and Aversia used the time to prepare other magic spells.

[Dancing Lights: Sword Dance]

Six little flames appeared behind Aversia, their shape became bigger and longer and transformed into Aversias preferred weapon, the ōdachi. (AN: For those that don´t know what a ōdachi is, it's basically the great sword

The six fire ōdachis were flying right above Aversia.

[Flame Mail: Gauntlet]

Grey flames started to envelope Zeldaris´s lower arms, and as they completely covered his lower arms, the flames transformed into a pair of gauntlets.

As for the members of the dark guilds, their situation was utter chaos, there was no cooperation between the three guilds, and they were getting in each other's way.

But there was still some that were able to get their grid together and launched a counterattack.

The blood beasts were running toward them, while a barrage of spells was fired at them and some members of Ghouls Claw were trying to inflict them with poison and other ailments.

But that was not enough to stop them.

Without any comment or signal, the fire swords began to fly toward the blood beasts with high speed.

Although they were made out of fire, they were still able to cut like a regular sword and burn everything that they touched.

The fire swords finished the blood beasts with no problem whatsoever and continued to fly toward the dark guild members.

Zeldaris on the other hand made a sweeping motion with his right hand and the gauntlet stretched out and transformed into a fire whip.

With it, he made short process of the blood beasts and even threw some of them toward the dark guild members.

As for the spells that were flying toward them, they were of no real threat toward Aversia and Zeldaris.

A good part of their power was absorbed before they even hit the two and when they finally reached them, they were not able to do much damage against them.

For the two of them it felt more like a mosquito bite and the two even ate some of the spells that were flying toward them, to the surprise and horror of the dark guild members.

The real threat however was the ailment magic, although the effects were weakened and the spells were slowly being absorbed by their bodies, they were being casted multiple times at them.

Even though their bodies were extremely tough, even they would not be able to handle it for a long time.

But that was only the case if they were going to do just stand around and do nothing, which they obviously didn´t do.

[[Chaos Dragon´s Roar]]

Both of them used their roar almost at the same time and defeated the dark guild members instantly.

After that Aversia and Erza arrived at the ruins and continued to run toward the tunnel, while Zeldaris run toward the middle of the ruins, where the camp of the dark guilds was.

[Territory]

Zeldaris used Territory to transform the area, in a radius of 20 meters away from him, into a flaming hell scape, in which he had absolute control over the flames.

Every dark guild member that was inside the range of Territory was burned to death and after confirming that they were dead, Zeldaris cancelled the spell and moved to the next group of enemies.

Aversia and Erza had finally arrived at the tunnel entrance and Aversia turned around and run toward the nearest group of enemies.

Erza watched as explosions and gray flames erupted inside the ruins and couldn´t help thinking that the two of them were similar to Natsu when it came to combat, only that they were even more destructive than the fire dragon slayer.

But her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps that were coming out of the tunnel.

Erza summoned one of her swords and readied herself.

Zeldaris and Aversia continued to hunt every single members of the dark guilds that were inside the ruins, either killing them or taking them out through other means.

As for the patrols that were in the surrounding area, they rushed back toward the ruins the second that they noticed the commotion inside the ruins, only to be bombarded by multiple fire balls.

Aversia and Zeldaris were throwing them toward the patrols as they were on their way toward the next group.

In the end it was a one sided beating, the members of the dark guilds were either dead or unconscious.

Zeldaris and Aversia took full advantage over the terain and with their sharp senses they could find their enemies with no problem while their oponents were not able to find them, since they could hide ontop of the buildings or behind the walls and use them for surprise attacks.

The two half dragons walked back to the tunnel entrance, where they found around 50 people lying on the ground, while Erza didn´t had a scratch or a drop of blood on her.

'She really is impressive.', thought Zeldaris.

"We underestimated their numbers, alone in the ruins were more than 100 members and with the patrols and the once you defeated, are we close to 200 members. I don´t get it what are they hopping to get that they would send so many members here?", said Aversia.

"I heard some rumors that the settlers worked together with the Council and that the Council was unable to recover the most important things, believing that they were destroyed or stollen.", said Erza, who became increasingly concerned.

"Which means that Tartaros and Grimoire Heart think that there is still something to find and probably have a way to get it. I don´t like this situation.", said Zeldaris.

The three of them walked into the tunnel.

The tunnel went deep into the mountains and magical lights, that were powered by lacrimas, lightened it up.

Scorch marks were visible on the walls and some of them had a human silhouette.

Whatever happened here a 100 years ago, burned almost everything to dust.

After walking for more than an hour and passing by many branches, they arrived at what once looked like a dead end but had now a giant hole in it and revealed a secret door.

The door had been broken open forcefully, the three stepped inside it and found a storage room and an office.

The door for the storage room had a few marks on it but was otherwise untouched.

As for the office, the ground was littered with documents, while on top of a desk lied a few others.

Aversia and Erza picked up a few documents that were on the ground and read them, Zeldaris picked one that was lying on the ground.

These were documents that descripted the developments of their projects and their researches, including those that were done with the Council.

The document that Zeldaris had was a summary of all the things that the council gave them to research and to develop.

Some were titled Face, Lullaby and the mysterious sword.

Zeldaris looked through the other documents on the table and it turned out that those were the detailed documents that were stated in the summary, although some of them were missing, including the one called Face.

"Zeldaris come here for a second I found something interesting.", said Aversia.

Zeldaris took the documents and walked to Aversia to see what she found.

What she found was a document that was hidden beneath a hole in the ground.

It seemed that the settlers had studied the celestial keys and the rumors of the so-called keys of Zeref.

The keys of Zeref were keys that Zeref left behind for his resurrection and the different cults that worshiped him tried to gather these keys, to resurrect their god.

But not all cults tried to gather the keys and tried other methods.

Apparently, the settlers became interested into them and tried to find them and study them.

And it seemed that they were able to find a few of them, but didn´t take them with them, except for one which they acquired through sheer coincidence, a broken sword that had only the hilt and a short part of the blade left.

It became the most important research project, but they were not able to learn much about it, but what they did learn from it made them reach new heights in magical armors and magical weapons and allowed them to develop their ultimate armor the Nakagami Armor.

The second that Erza and Aversia read that name, they became absolutely flabbergasted while Zeldaris was confused at their reaction.

"Ugh, I can´t believe that you never heard of that armor. It is one of the most legendary armors on this continent and a dream for every blacksmith to try and to make one themselves. There are only a couple of them left and no one was able to put them on in more than a year, since they require a gigantic amount of magical power, but that's totally worth it…", said Aversia, who was getting worked up about it and continued to ramble on about that armor, while Erza was nodding the whole time.

Zeldaris on the other hand didn´t care about it and stopped listening to what Aversia was saying.

Although he was curious about that armor, since he was a blacksmith himself, but he wasn´t nearly as obsessed about the craft as Aversia and the old man, but what intrigued him was that mysterious sword that was mentioned and started to search through the documents that were on the desk, since it was listed in the summery.

And indeed, it was there, he started to read the document and it seemed that the sword was given to the Council after the settlers were finished with it, there was however a sketch of the sword and Zeldaris felt that it was oddly familiar.

He continued to ponder about it for a few moments and remembered why it was so familiar to him and shocked him senseless.

Because that sword was the lost part of the prototype that Vulcan created more than 400 years ago and Emrissen broke with a single punch, the hilt flew away, they were never able to find it.

He never thought that it would survive these 400 years, but it did.

"Hey, listen to me when I am talking to you. Zeldaris? Hello? What could be bad that you…. HOLLY SHIT! IS THAT WHAT I THINK IT IS?"

flErza was surprised as she saw Aversias reaction and also wanted to see what Zeldaris had in his hands, but as she saw the sketch of the broken sword, she became confused since she didn´t see anything special about it.

So, she decided to go through some other documents.

Aversia and Zeldaris took some time to calm themselves down and decided to take the document about the sword with them and talk with Vulcan about it.

For the next few hours, the three read through almost every document that was on the ground, they mostly skimmed through them since there was not really something else that caught their attention.

And after going through them they decided to try and open the storage room.

Obviously it was locked, and they were also not able to find the key for it, so they decided to open it with force.

Zeldaris stood before the door and readied himself to punch it.

His right arm started to get covered in white scales and grey flames covered his fist.

[Chaos Dragon´s Iron Fist]

The door was completely destroyed by the punch and broke into multiple pieces and flew through the room.

"Jeez. Talk about overkill.", said Aversia.

"I believed that this amount was necessary, looks like I was mistaken. Besides I don´t know what you are complaining about the door is open and we can go in.", said Zeldaris as he watched as the scales were disappearing from his arm.

"Well then let´s go inside and look what we can find.", said Erza and walked inside.