Karna flew into the fifth house among the list that he had gotten from Jellal. Finding no lights, a small ominous feeling came to his mind. He easily opened the door using Alohomora and entered the premises.
The first thing that came to his mind was the smell of blood spread across the room. There, he found the council member dead on the floor with blood all around him.
Karna went near him and found out that his blood had already dried up, meaning that he had been dead for too long.
'Guess this one's a bust. Sorry I wasn't able to make it in time,' Karna silently told the dead council member.
He had already gone to the houses of five other members and had successfully saved them from further harm. The demons who had appeared there had been successfully destroyed by him using the Death Slayer arrows, making sure that they never got reborn again.
That's right, Mard Geer had decided to accelerate his plan to activate the Faces. And they had decided to complete the gathering of the keys of Face during the Grand Magic Games, when almost the entirety of the strongest wizards of Fiore would be in the capital and away from the houses of the council members.
In the original timeline, the demons had the ability to revive even if they died, so they were not at all concerned about life or death and openly attacked the council members and public while the entire continent was at its strongest, with nothing distracting them from targeting the demons.
But Karna had shown them years ago that he had the ability to permanently kill them without any chance of revival at all, making them rethink their plans to activate the Faces and attack people so blatantly without considering the consequences. But even then, they might not have been that worried, as they were the demons from the Book of Zeref and therefore among the strongest existences in the world.
And my disappearance after the battle with Acnologia seven years ago might have made them think that there would be no more obstructions to their plan. While at the same time, my return might have also spurred them into accelerating their plan at the best possible moment.
Karna was thinking about this while flying through the sky towards the next location. Normally, he could have used the markers he had placed in various cities to teleport to the locations. But the council members were afraid of being attacked after they retired. So they made sure to retire to places so peaceful that there was not even a guild in the adjacent cities.
Karna had already managed to relocate a few council members without any problem, which included the council member that Gajeel was close to and who had died in the original timeline.
'Now, I only need to find the other council members as fast as possible,' Karna decided, as the main thing to do right now was to save those people from being killed.
But while doing so, Karna had a feeling in the back of his mind that things were not as simple as he imagined them to be.
At the same time in Tartaros.
"What is the plan, my lord? We had already obtained the keys secretly during the seven years Vermillion was absent from the world. All we needed to do was secretly activate them and then plunge the entire continent into despair strong enough to give birth to END," one of his subordinates asked.
Mard Geer did not reply. He only had a pondering expression that he had worn for the last few days. But finally, he decided to speak out loud.
"Recently, I was able to acquire a set of information that told me about the level of threat that we will face if we allow the appearance of Face without preparing to face the Black Dragon."
"What do you mean, sir?"
"The Face structures only affect human wizards. Their suppression effects will not remove the magic from the dragons, and the release of mass despair and END might invite the attention of the Apocalypse Dragon.
Even though END is the strongest member of our species, he still needs time to gain complete mastery over his abilities, and the chances of him winning are very low when he has just been born," he said, which made the entire group of Etherious contemplate, with a few of them nodding in agreement.
While they were thinking about it, Mard Geer was looking back at the supposed conversation he had with their most despicable enemy.
A few years ago.
Mard Geer tried his best to fight against the suppression weighing him down right now but was completely unsuccessful.
He was within his own office in Tartaros but was unable to do anything against the intruder standing in front of him right now.
"Now, now, unlike the other fools made by that brat who scream about becoming one with Zeref without knowing the meaning of it, you know the true meaning of what it means to be an Etherious, right?" Ankhseram said with a smirk that radiated arrogance.
Mard Geer wanted to scream and claw the flesh off the person responsible for putting their lord through misery all these centuries.
Even though the aim and dream of his life was to kill Zeref, that dream only existed because it was what Zeref wished to happen. In no way did Mard Geer hate his creator. Even knowing that Zeref's death would also lead to the death of every Etherious, including himself, Mard Geer would not hesitate to kill Zeref.
All for the happiness of his creator.
"Now, now, either you can be angry at me and not listen to everything I say, or you can listen to me and complete the destiny for which you were created by that boy."
Back to the present.
Even remembering that conversation was causing untold rage to rise within Mard Geer. But there was nothing he could do if he wanted to finally free his creator from his suffering.
A/N - Hope you like it.