"Dragoon"

A low voice reached his ears from behind. A chill shot straight up Jerome's spine. What incredible Concealment! He hadn't noticed a thing, yet someone had crept right up behind him.

They'd seen through the weakness in his Magecraft with ease. Who was this person?!

Jerome twisted and drove his shoulder backward, trying to draw his sword by force, but there was no one behind him. He struck at empty air.

By the time he realized what was happening, a fist was already headed straight for his face.

Jerome, already off balance, cried out in pain and toppled backward.

"Your swordsmanship is average, and your hand-to-hand skills are a complete mess. Apart from that sword, what else have you got?"

"Oh, right. You're pretty handsome, but you still don't hold a candle to me."

Noah kicked the Dark Sword out of Jerome's hand, then slammed his boot into Jerome's nose. Jerome's eyes watered from the pain.

Just as Noah was about to let Jerome sleep for a while, a sense of danger behind him made him dart aside.

A barbed spear plunged straight into the spot where he'd just been standing.

Jerome hadn't been alone after all. With Haomen's help, he rolled away from Noah across the ground without a shred of dignity, conveniently retrieving his Dark Sword along the way.

Watching the black magic rise from the blade, Noah felt a little helpless. He'd seen Jerome use that sword to corrode an entire stone wall.

With destructive power like that, and yet Jerome was only working at a Dark Magic Cult branch. Just how powerful were the cult's high-ranking priests?

This world's waters ran deep.

Noah didn't know that the two men before him were Dark Magic priests. He only knew that, now that he'd been exposed, he couldn't take them both down with hand-to-hand combat alone.

"You dare ambush me, you despicable bastard!"

Jerome glared furiously at Noah. While getting beaten just now, he'd recognized the guild mark on Noah's arm: Fairy Tail, the guild that was always sticking its nose into other people's business.

"Even if I am part of an evil dark cult, you're a member of a guild of light! Does that mean you can use such underhanded methods against me?! You bastard!"

Both Noah and Haomen froze when Jerome said this.

Seriously, man!

Was I supposed to observe some code of honor when dealing with bad guys?

Were you seriously trying to be funny?

Noah couldn't hold back his laughter, but Haomen, his fellow cultist, managed to suppress the twitch at the corner of his mouth. At least when it came to their own roles as villains, he and Jerome shared the same understanding.

"Jerome, our priority is to capture this Fairy Tail Mage and then interrogate him to our hearts' content."

As a perverted sadist who loved torture, Haomen had a cruel desire to brutally torment every handsome or beautiful person to death.

"Interrogation: Grand Celebration!"

One magic circle after another unfolded around Haomen as he swept his hands through the air. A variety of horrific instruments of torture appeared, each with a different design.

Jerome's gaze landed on an instrument called the Blast Pliers. He casually shifted a few steps away from his deranged colleague.

Even Noah, who'd been doing his best to stay composed, couldn't help breaking into a cold sweat when he saw some of the tools. If he got caught, he was in for a terrible time.

If only he'd bought a few defective Magecraft tools from Doran to use beforehand.

Noah knew that no matter how nimble he was, there was no way he could escape unscathed under the onslaught of all those torture devices. And that was without even considering Jerome, who was watching him like a hawk.

This was, after all, a world of magic.

"Man, I really overestimated myself."

With a resigned sigh, Noah turned to Jerome and Haomen. "Do either of you know Dragon Slayer magic?"

"Hmph, still spouting nonsense at a time like this!"

"Sweetheart, once I catch you, I'll get a hundred gay guys to service you!"

Jerome and Haomen both charged at Noah.

"Then I'll take it you don't know Dragon Slayer magic."

Torture devices and dark sword beams swept toward him from every direction. Facing it all, Noah merely smiled. A delicate dragon figurine, small enough to fit in his palm, had appeared in his hand.

To protect his own backside, Noah finally unleashed his trump card.

The Edolas world's war Magecraft weapon, meticulously perfected by humanity over the course of centuries: the forbidden autonomous Magecraft weapon, Dragoon!

Four hundred years ago, the king of Edolas had observed the chaotic world of Earth-land and modeled this weapon of absolute destruction after an exceptionally terrifying being.

All magic other than Dragon Slayer magic was greatly weakened against the Dragoon.

But if it encountered a Dragon Slayer Mage, the Dragoon could not reduce the damage. In fact, it would take double damage from Dragon Slayer magic.

In other words, Dragon Slayer magic was the absolute nemesis of Dragon Knights.

Even during Faust's most extreme period, he had never considered invading Earth-land. Instead, he secretly stole magic power with Anima, afraid that an encounter with a Dragon Slayer Mage would wipe them out in one fell swoop.

But looking at the situation now, Noah could confirm that the two Dark Magic Cult idiots on the other side weren't Dragon Slayer Mages.

"Dragoon, activate extermination mode."

A black magic circle spread outward from beneath Noah's feet, warding off every spell aimed at him.

The little "figurine" began to spin and assemble its parts at a frantic pace. In the blink of an eye, the palm-sized model had grown a thousandfold.

A humanoid dragon mech gleamed with silver-black metal.

Its enormous shadow fell over Jerome and Haomen, blocking out all the light around them.

A pair of scarlet eyes stared emotionlessly at the two ants on the ground. A cold, mechanical voice rang out.

"Identity confirmed: His Highness Prince Noah."

"Extermination mode activated."

A powerful suction swept away the magic particles in the air above Iron Furnace Ridge in an instant, converting them into a black-speckled magical beam inside the Dragoon's mouth.

The ground shook, and the air seemed to tremble with it. The entire valley was bathed in the beam's ghastly white light.

Under the earth-shaking magical pressure, Jerome and Haomen couldn't summon the courage to resist or flee. All they felt was the helplessness of drowning and the despair of falling into an abyss.

Without a sound, the extermination beam blasted a massive hole into the valley floor. Jerome and Haomen had been reduced to dust by the terrifying attack.

To Noah's surprise, Jerome's Dark Sword had survived. Was dark magic really that tenacious? Judging by the battered state of the blade, though, it was probably unusable now.

After shrinking and folding back and forth several times, the Dragoon returned to its figurine size. The commotion it had caused, however, couldn't be undone.

Noah knew the extermination beam he'd just fired would inevitably draw people from the surrounding area. He didn't want to reveal the Dragoon's existence just yet, but now there was no explaining away the damage to the valley floor.

What a pain. Maybe he should just make a run for it.

Noah tried to slip away, but he didn't get far. In the distance, he spotted a scantily dressed girl flying toward him on a card.

Cana looked at the boy standing in the valley, lost in thought, and waved vigorously. "Noah! Are you okay?"