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Once Noah had a chance to catch up on everything, he finally understood why everyone was looking at him the way they would look at someone returned from the dead.
From his own perspective, barely a day had passed. He had cleared out the Black Abyss, crossed through the void to reach the Celestial Spirit World, and then thoroughly beaten the Celestial Spirit King, who had been driven into a violent, unrecognizable state by the Eclipse. Start to finish, it had felt like a single long day.
In Earth Land, three months had gone by.
Noah knew that one day in the Celestial Spirit World was equivalent to three months on Earth Land. What he had not anticipated was that time in the Black Abyss moved at nearly the same rate. Not that it mattered anymore, given that the Black Abyss no longer existed.
He patted Erza and Mira on their backs reassuringly, but his eyes were already fixed on the Celestial Spirit King, whose enormous head was jammed through the Eclipse Gate at an undignified angle. The eyes that had once shone like stars now held nothing but churning, directionless rage.
"Zeref," Noah said, "the Celestial Spirit World is being eaten away by something called Eclipse Power. Is that connected to your Eclipse Gate?"
Zeref studied the struggling Celestial Spirit King, his brow creased deeply. "The Eclipse is not a type of magic or a curse," he said. "It is a dark energy produced by the movement of the stars themselves. It is extraordinarily vast, and strange in ways that are difficult to fully account for. It can affect the minds of living beings, and it can also distort time and space."
He gestured toward the gate behind them. "It was because I managed to capture a faint trace of Eclipse Power all those years ago that I was able to build the Eclipse Gate at all."
Noah put the pieces together. Celestial Spirits were, in their essence, manifestations of light, a fusion of starlight and Magic Power. That was precisely what made them so utterly vulnerable to the Eclipse, which drew from the same source but carried corruption within it rather than light.
When the dark Eclipse Power grew strong enough to overwhelm a Celestial Spirit's inner light, it polluted them, warping their minds and stripping away their sanity. What remained were Eclipse Celestial Spirits, violent and unrecognizable. The darkness had also severed the bonds between Celestial Spirits and their contractors entirely, making it impossible to summon them or even make contact.
He turned back to the Celestial Spirit King, still writhing and radiating black light from every surface. When Noah had arrived in the Celestial Spirit World, that beautiful, storybook realm had been unrecognizable. Wrecked.
As the ruler of the stars and the heart of that world, the Celestial Spirit King had suffered the Eclipse's influence more than any other. The rest of the Celestial Spirits had followed him into corruption, and together they had been tearing their own homeland apart.
The only exceptions were Horologium and Crux, who he had been shielding. Every single other Celestial Spirit, from the greatest to the smallest, had been hunting those two across the ruins of their world. That was the scene that had greeted Noah when he arrived.
It was, he had to admit, quite a spectacle. And Horologium, managing to endure a blow from the Eclipse Celestial Spirit King himself, had been genuinely impressive. Then the Eclipse Celestial Spirit King had noticed Noah.
What followed was Noah, alone, taking on the entire Celestial Spirit World. He had pinned the Eclipse Celestial Spirit King and every other Eclipse Celestial Spirit to the ground, one after another, until they stopped moving.
After that, he had accidentally driven the Celestial Spirit King's head straight into the Eclipse Gate, which had appeared without warning, and ended up following it back to Earth Land.
Everyone stared at him when he finished.
What did he mean, he had defeated the entire Celestial Spirit World by himself? Was that even possible for a human being?
Noah looked at their expressions and shrugged. He released Erza and Mira, crossed the distance to Zeref in an instant, and pressed his palm flat against Zeref's chest.
"Magnetic Field Sky Lock, release."
Zeref's sealed Magic Power surged back into the world in a single breath. His expression immediately darkened. "Noah, why did you release the Sky Lock? Have you forgotten the curse that is bound to my magic power..."
He stopped mid-sentence. Something changed in his face. His magic power was moving through him on its own, searching, and what it found, or rather, what it did not find, made him go very still.
The Contradictory Curse was gone.
He searched again. Nothing. It had been a part of him for over four hundred years, and now it simply was not there.
How?
Had the Magnetic Field Sky Lock somehow eliminated it while it was sealed? That seemed impossible. Noah had never mentioned anything like that being one of its effects.
Noah watched Zeref work through his confusion and quietly cleared his throat. "There is something I should have mentioned sooner. The Black Abyss and the Eighteen Demon War Gods have been destroyed. By me." A brief pause. "Ankhseram no longer exists."
"What?!"
Zeref stared at him. It was one of the rare moments when he genuinely lost his composure.
He had never known the full extent of the Demon War Gods' power, but Ankhseram's curse had been an unbroken chain around his existence for over four hundred years. Every solution he had ever tried had failed. The sheer power behind a god who could inflict something like the Contradictory Curse and sustain it across centuries without effort was almost beyond imagining.
And Noah had just told them, in a single flat sentence, that this god was dead, with roughly the same energy one might use to mention a minor errand they had run.
Lucy, watching the conversation drift further and further from what actually mattered, finally spoke up. "Noah, is there a way to help the Celestial Spirit World? The Celestial Spirits..."
Noah shook his head and looked to Zeref. He had meant to ask that question before getting sidetracked.
Zeref thought it over. "The Celestial Spirit King is the single largest vessel for Eclipse energy, and he is also the one who governs the Celestial Spirit World. If his consciousness could be restored, he would very likely be able to drive the Eclipse corruption out of the entire world through his authority over it." He paused. "Which means..."
"We need to beat him until he wakes up." Noah cracked his knuckles, and a thoroughly pleased smile appeared on his face.
He looked at the Celestial Spirit King, still straining against the Eclipse Gate with single-minded fury, his mind so clouded by Eclipse Power that there was barely anything coherent left in those eyes.
Zeref nodded. "At present, the most direct and reliable approach appears to be physically overpowering the Celestial Spirit King in order to force his suppressed consciousness back to the surface."
"Understood. Leave it to me."
Noah stepped up to the Eclipse Celestial Spirit King's massive head and met the dark, destruction-filled gaze head on. He spoke over his shoulder to the others, his voice easy.
"I'll be right back."
He smiled and pulled his right fist back to his hip. The Magnetic Field Power rose around him, invisible but unmistakable to anyone who had seen it before. The Celestial Spirit King was someone he knew, which meant he had to be careful. Nothing too lethal.
Magnetic Field Rotation! Four hundred and fifty thousand units of power!
Martial Arts: Awakening Divine Brain Fist!
The punch landed squarely on the Eclipse Celestial Spirit King's forehead with enough force to wake something up without ending it. The roar it produced rolled through the Dragon Graveyard like a thunderclap.
The tremor was felt across the entire mountain and carried all the way into the capital nearby.
The Eclipse Celestial Spirit King let out a pained, ground-shaking roar. His head, stuck fast in the Eclipse Gate for so long, was blasted clean through to the other side in an instant. Noah was already moving, leaping through the Gate after him before it had time to settle.
The Eclipse Gate shuddered.
A series of enormous crashes and impacts came rumbling through from the other side.
Everyone left standing in the Dragon Graveyard looked at one another, utterly at a loss.