The people who had just breathed a sigh of relief froze again.
"Nine..."
Happy huddled beside Lucy.
"One dragon can destroy an entire town."
Carla looked at the massive figures in the city.
"If nine dragons act together, all of Crocus will be flattened."
Watching the dragons scatter in every direction, the soldiers fell into despair once more.
"How could we possibly stop them?"
"One attack from those monsters could destroy an entire street!"
"Nine... a full nine of them!"
"Hahahahaha!"
Laughter suddenly rose from the ruins.
Future Rogue slowly rose from a patch of shadow.
He looked at the now-closed Eclipse Gate without the slightest disappointment.
"Enough."
"Nine are enough."
Yukino helped Lucy to her feet and glared at him.
"It was you!"
"You arranged all of this?"
Future Rogue did not deny it.
"That's right."
"I deliberately told Hisui that the Eclipse Gate could be turned into a cannon."
"I also deliberately made her believe that ten thousand dragons would attack Crocus in the future."
Hisui's body swayed.
"You were lying to me from the very beginning?"
"Of course."
Future Rogue raised both hands.
"The magic power accumulated by the Eclipse Gate over seven years is just enough to connect to four hundred years ago."
"What I wanted was to bring the dragons of the ancient era here."
He threw back his head and laughed.
"The age of humanity is over!"
"From today onward, the world will belong to the dragons once again!"
Yukino clenched her golden key.
"You madman!"
"You're human too, so why release dragons to slaughter humans?"
The smile on Future Rogue's face slowly faded.
"Because humanity simply cannot defeat Acnologia."
"In the world seven years from now, there was no descent of ten thousand dragons."
"There was only one dragon that truly destroyed everything."