Chapter 73: Answers

It took Elfman and Lisanna to take care of all twelve ships, but everything went without any problems and all ships, and their crews were captured.

Zeldaris and Aversia flew toward one of the ships, where Elfman and Lisanna were already waiting for them.

This was the biggest of the twelve and the ship of the leader of these bandits.

The captain of the ship, its officers and the captains of the other ships had been tied up and imprisoned in one of the rooms.

Zeldaris and Aversia wanted to interrogate them themselves, so that they could finally get some answers.

As they landed on the ship, they talked to Elfman and Lisanna a little and praised them for how well they pulled it off, especially Lisanna since this was the first time that she used this form in actual combat.

Lisanna had transformed herself into a fish called Mabaya whish lived deep in the ocean and could only in extremely rare occasions bee seen close to the coasts, although nobody knows why.

Abaya were able to use water magic, which they used to hunt and to protect themselves from predators.

Lisanna found one bee sheer coincidence while on a job with Elfman and became her go to fish transformation.

Zeldaris and Aversia entered the room, after they told Elfman and Lisanna to not let anyone else into the room.

The room itself was small and multiple large metal rings on the walls and chained onto these rings were the captains and officers, all of them staring daggers at Zeldaris and Aversia.

All of them looked like typical bandits.

"How does it feels being chained up like this? Does it bring any sympathy for the people that you sold as slaves?" asked Aversia in cold tone.

Lisanna and Elfman had skimmed through some of the books on the ship and found some horrific things.

This fleet used to be a slave fleet.

"Go to hell! All four of you! Do you have any idea who I am?!" asked the leader of this group.

"A piece of shit that will tell us everything that we want to know." answered Zeldaris.

Suddenly all of the captured captains and officers begun to laugh.

"Believe me, you will regret this, but I am lenient, free us and we will let all four of you live. Maybe we will have some fun with you four first." said the captain while laughing.

"Oh? And how are we going to regret this?" asked Aversia, her patience was running out.

"Like so!" yelled the captain and with a breaking sound all of the rings broke, and the bandits were free.

"Why does inferior quality always help the wrong people?" said Zeldaris to no one in particular.

Zeldaris and Aversia didn´t see these bandits as any threats at all.

With a loud yell all of the bandits rushed toward Zeldaris and Aversia, hoping to overwhelm them with numbers.

"[Territory: Chains]"

Zeldaris covered the entire room in his Territory and transformed the flames into chains that chained the bandits to the ground and the walls, not giving them any room to move.

Aversia walked slowly toward the leader and placed her foot on top of his body.

"You were saying?" she said in a voice dripping with sarcasm.

"I WILL KILL YOU!" yelled the leader, fully consumed by rage.

Without even batting an eye, Aversia put strength into her foot and slowly begun to crush his body.

The leader cried out in pain, but Zeldaris and Aversia had no mercy for him and neither Elfman nor Lisanna would stop them if they saw this, for the things in the books were truly horrifying.

Aversia lifted her foot of the leader after half a minute before asking again, "Will you tell us now? Or are you going to force me to become brutal because my patience is running thin."

The leader breathed heavily before saying in a faint voice, "I… I will tell you."

What they got out of the leader and the rest of the captains was rather unsettling.

They were part of a large group of slave traders and smugglers that mainly acted in Bosco.

He and his fleet main job had been to raid settlements in other countries, to acquire new slaves, or to smuggle slaves or other things from dark guilds or other organizations into Bosco.

But all of that changed not to long ago because of an incident that happened in Fiore, to be more precise the incident between Natsu and Bora.

After interrogating Bora, they found out about the flourishing black-market in Bosco.

The council signaled not only the Rune Knights in Bosco but also the ones at the near vicinity of Bosco to act.

Additionally, the council pressured the royal family of the kingdom into action, forcing them to expand a lot of power in the fight against the underworld.

Needless to say, the black-market almost crushed completely, and it was now almost impossible to smuggle slaves and other things into the kingdom.

It also turned out that the ships of the company had been used to smuggle things into the kingdom of Bosco, because nobody would suspect something between the mountains of raw materials.

But now, every ship no matter what would be strictly searched through.

Which is why the fleet 'attacked' the transport ships, so that they could extract the goods and smuggle them through another way into Bosco and this was supposed to be the last shipment of goods.

After hearing all of this, chained Zeldaris and Aversia the captains and officers again to the walls, this time in a way that would ensure that they would not be able to free themselves again and walked outside.

Outside they saw Elfman and Lisanna attaching long ropes to the ships and were just about to finish.

"[Open gate of the snake charmer: Ophiuchus]"

The giant body of the mostly metallic snake rose out of the water and looked around, trying to see where she was.

"Ophiuchus! Can you help us drag these ships back to the harbor?" asked Aversia.

Ophiuchus opened her mouth in delight, happy that she could be helpful, and took the long ropes into her mouth and begun to swim toward the harbor of Hargeon.

Zeldaris flew toward the transport ships and told them everything that they got out of the bandits and told them that they should go back to Hargeon and search through the ships to find the goods that were supposed to be smuggled.

The three captains agreed and were furious that their ships were used to smuggle goods into Bosco.

Back in Hargeon they had created quite the ruckus, a giant snake, mostly made out of metal, pulling multiple ships behind it was definitely something that didn´t happened every day.

Under the crowd that of people was the head of the company and he came up to them the second they got of the ships and asked them why they came back.

The captains, Zeldaris and Aversia told him everything that they got out of the bandits and that the crews of the three ships had found the goods that had been placed into the ships.

Unexpectedly, the head fainted after hearing everything, he had probably imagined what would have happened if the ships had reached Bosco with the goods still on board.

Some workers of the company brought the head to the hospital while the secretary of the head brought them to the company to discuss the next steps.

The secretary and the assistant of the head discussed with Zeldaris, Aversia, Elfman and Lisanna how they should manage the situation.

First off, they thanked the four for their work up to this point and asked them if they would continue helping them with this situation.

The four mages agreed.

Lisanna told them that it would be good to tell everything to the council and the army, since the council was currently dealing with the underworld in Bosco and would be helpful for any leads to any organization.

As for the army, they had more experience in dealing with stuff like this and would be an immense help

Both the secretary and the assistant agreed, the help of the council and the army would be a huge help, especially when none of them had any idea how big this whole organization was in the first place.

However, while they would wait for the answer/help of the council and army, they would try and find out who put the goods on the ship in the first place.

This should not be too difficult since the bandits knew almost all of the information about the caravan and not many people know the timetables of the caravans, meaning that it must be someone with a lot of power in the company.

But somehow the world had something against them because while they still got through all of the information that they had a notice from the hospital arrived.

It told them that the head had disappeared from the hospital and that he attacked and injured multiple staff members.

"IT WAS THE HEAD?" yelled Zeldaris, not believing what he heard.

"He didn´t acted like a man from the beginning." said Elfman.

"But wasn´t he the one that hired us in the first place?" asked Lisanna in confusion.

"Not really." explained the secretary in a rather awkward tone.

"The two of us and everyone in the company had pressured him to hire some mages. In the past we had hired mercenaries when we had problems but this time, we thought that mercenaries would not be enough." explained the assistant while scratching his head.

"He probably wanted that this request would only reach small guilds, but because there not many guilds in the vicinity and the city itself doesn´t has a guild as well…"

"But also, the fact that Fairy Tail is not too far away from the town means that we also received the request." finished Zeldaris while rubbing his temples.

"Exactly."

Aversia stood up and yelled, "Then let us get him already!"

Elfman agreed, while Zeldaris and Lisanna sighed.

The four and Ophiuchus ran in the direction that the head had fleet in.

Zeldaris and Aversia were using their sense of smell to find his trail, which did not take long to find.

With their current speed it would not take long to catch up to him, but they soon found a building that looked like a guild hall.

"You have got to be kidding me, why the fuck is there a dark guild here?!" said Zeldaris while face palming.

Aversia looked at the emblem and recognized it.

"isn´t that one of Oración Seis. If I remember correctly, it was called Smiling Trickster, or something like that."

"Then let's show them what it means to be a man!" yelled Elfman.

"Can I help too?" asked Ophiuchus, with stars in her eyes.

"Of course, you can." said Aversia while patting Ophiuchus´s head.

All five of them walked toward the gate of the building.

As they stood before the gate, Ophiuchus became a bit nervous and said, "S… Shouldn´t we make some plans or strategies or something… like… that…"

All four stood still for a moment before they started to laugh.

""NAH!"" yelled both Zeldaris and Aversia and punched the gate, making it flying into the inside of the building.

Inside the building, the head of the company was explaining the situation to the guild leader of Smiling Trickster.

After the head finished his story, looked the guildmaster at him with a serious look and asked, "Which guild excepted the request?"

The head opened his mouth to answer but a sudden loud smashing sound and something crashing into the interior of the guild interrupted him.

The head and the guildmaster rushed outside to see what happened, only to see that the gate had been sent flying into the building and five people standing at the entrance.

The guildmaster and the head stared with wide eyes and open mouths at the intruders.

Meanwhile, people came running into the main hall, to see what happened, and it didn´t take long before the room was full of people.

"I do not know who you are, but you made a huge mistake by coming here and destroying our gate. Everyone, get them." yelled the guildmaster and every person in the room rushed toward the five intruders.

However, the people that were in the front were defeated before they could even hit the intruders, because they also moved and attacked the members of the guild.

Zeldaris and the others rushed forward and started to fight with the members of the dark guild.

"I will show you what it means to be a real man! [Beast Soul]" yelled Elfman as he used his magic and transformed into the beast.

"[Animal Soul: Cat]"

Lisanna also used her magic and transformed into one of her more humanoid forms.

Her forearms and feet became covered in stripped fur.

Her hands grew bigger, claws came out of the tips of her fingers and cat paws appeared on the underside of her hands.

She also had feline ears, whiskers, a small cat nose and a long feline tail.

Her hair also grew longer. (AN: In the manga her hair was longer in this form.)

But that wasn´t the only thing that changed, her clothes did too.

She now wore a 2-piece bikini that had the same color and style as her fur.

Zeldaris and Aversia took out their weapons, a halberd and odachi.

Ophiuchus on the other hand just balled her fists, she was not sure what to do since she never fought in human form.

And the second that they clashed with the members of the dark guild; it became a one-sided beating.

Elfman went absolute wild and stormed through the ranks of the dark guild, no one could stop him.

Lisanna was too quick for any of them and was easily able to dodge all attacks, while her own attacks were too fast for the enemies to react to.

Her claws had already slashed through multiple people.

Zeldaris and Aversia used this opportunity to train their weapon skills, none of the enemies could force the two half dragons to use their magic, which was actually a good thing for them.

As for Ophiuchus, she sent her opponents flying with just one punch, she was getting increasingly confident.

The guildmaster and the head of the company could not believe what they saw.

"WHO THE FUCK DID YOU HIRE!?" the guildmaster yelled toward the head of the company, after he snapped out of his daze.

"They… They were the only ones that accepted." the head mumbled; barely audible.

"WHO?!"

"Fairy… Tail…"

The face of the guildmaster went white after he heard this, because he now realized that the worst-case scenario had occurred.