"The nuisances have been cleared away." Achill shook the dust off himself and said calmly, "Now, let's assign everyone their part in the plan!"
Beside him, Erza and the others watched Achill with serious, attentive expressions, waiting for his answer.
"There really isn't much to this so-called plan. Simply put, we just need to find Gerard!" Rubbing his temples, Achill said calmly, "You've probably already sensed it: this Tower of Paradise is filled with powerful magic energy! Simon, since you and the others once lived here, you should understand that better than anyone."
"All of it was magic energy squeezed out of us former sacrifices!" Seeing Gray and Lucy's confused expressions, Simon slowly explained, "After Gerard took control of the Tower of Paradise, he didn't drain our magic energy indiscriminately the way those dark wizard organizations used to. But he used faith to make everyone worship Zeref, the strongest and most evil dark wizard in legend! He made everyone willingly contribute their magic energy! Contribute whatever they were worth! Of course, very few of us ever actually learned magic, so even though Gerard used a more scientific method to extract small amounts of magic energy from everyone, you said it yourself, Brother Nameless: the amount needed to build the R System was simply enormous!! Even with all the magic energy we accumulated over the years, we only just managed to complete the Tower of Paradise's basic structure and barely maintain its most fundamental operations! But to activate it successfully and let it perform its intended function, we would need an absolutely tremendous supply of magic energy. As you deduced, Brother Nameless, without the terrifying magic energy of the Etherion that's about to descend, it would be utterly impossible!!!"
"But that's precisely the problem..." Achill sighed, sounding rather helpless. "The magic