Inside the guild—
Each person had a drawing board in front of them and was scribbling away furiously.
Selene, Ultear, Ur, and Makarov, who were not participating, served as the judges and were currently giving scores.
Erza, full of enthusiasm, quickly submitted her design.
'Mm... it was extremely abstract.'
'It could barely even be called armor!'
Erza excitedly introduced her work to Selene and the others.
"I placed great importance on the armor's strength and various resistances! And of course, the appearance must be extremely gorgeous!"
Erza's drawing mainly used red as its base color, paired with all sorts of abstract lines.
The entire design looked like a scarecrow wearing a strange, mismatched suit of armor.
The lower half of the armor looked like a grass skirt, and the most outrageous part was that it even had a long diagonal bang design.
The weapons in its left and right hands looked like crab pincers.
"Greatly shocked!" —By Selene.
"So shocking it might appear in my dreams..." Ultear added.
"There is... a lot of room for improvement..." Ur said through gritted teeth.
"N-nine points!" Makarov shakily raised his scoring board.
His nine points... were out of one hundred, of course!
Some things could only be understood, not spoken aloud.
"You're all praising it too much."
Erza was completely unaware and took all of it as compliments.
Next came the second heavyweight contestant.
Mira raised one finger and smiled with narrowed eyes.
"I believe the most important element of armor should be cuteness!"
Mira had designed a set of pink frog armor...
Basically, it was the Pro Max version of Frosch, with a pair of white feathered wings added to the back.
In other words, it was Frosch using Wing Magic.
Ultear hesitated before saying, "Uh... armor designed with Frosch as the model?"
Only then did Mira seem to suddenly realize that it looked very similar to Frosch.
"N-nine points!"
Makarov expressed equal treatment.
Next came a contestant with considerable weight.
"The most important element in armor design is, of course—manliness!"
Elfman's armor design was actually drawn fairly well, but it was really not suitable for Erza.
The main body was white, with golden lines around the edges. The broad, rounded pauldrons on both sides were probably even larger than Erza's head. At a glance, it was clearly designed for a muscular brute like Elfman.
For someone with Erza's figure, wearing armor like this would look rather strange.
That said, among the three people who had submitted so far, Elfman's design and drawing skill were honestly the best.
Levy wore her Gale-Force Reading Glasses and tapped the drawing board lightly with a pointer.
"My design is a simple light armor, similar to the kind of lightweight armor worn by Cross Knight Black Panther Knight Irina. However, I colored mine orange and added some golden patterns."
"My turn! My turn! The most important element in armor design is gorgeousness! That's why I chose rose gold as the main color!"
Lucy's drawing was quite good.
The entire armor was rose gold, with branch-like shoulder armor extending from the back. Behind it was a white cloak.
The armor itself had a dragon-scale pattern, and the figure in the drawing held a long spear glowing with a rose-gold halo.
"I like this one," Selene said very directly.
"This is indeed the best work so far," Ur said honestly.
"Full marks!"
Makarov very slyly wrote down "full marks," not letting Erza and Mira know that his full marks meant one hundred points.
"My turn, my turn!"
Raizel had also joined the contest.
His drawing skills were poor, but he had found an external plugin—Reedus.
He directly transmitted the composition in his mind to Reedus using Super Archive Magic and had Reedus draw it out for him.
Back then, this thing had been placed right on his desk, and he had occasionally picked it up to play with it.
Although some of the finer details had long since become blurry, thanks to the fact that he had imagined armor designs many years ago, he had deliberately deepened this memory impression and stored it in his mind using Super Archive Magic.
Raizel recalled the image from the side, while Reedus made some additions according to his own understanding and aesthetics.
This time, Raizel had Reedus draw two designs, which was why it took so much time.
In truth, this was not really something Raizel designed himself.
He had borrowed it.
He had never expected that he would end up becoming this kind of plagiarist.
His first design was Lü Bu.
Of course, not the real Lü Bu, but a mecha-style Lü Bu.
Reedus directly drew the front, back, left, and right sides of the armor on a single sheet of paper.
The armor mainly used four colors: black, gold, red, and purple, combining several contrasting colors together.
Below the mask were two sharp fangs resembling the lower jaw of a tiger with its mouth open. On top of the head was an extremely exaggerated four-pronged golden crown.
In addition, the red pheasant-tail plumes on the head were assembled from multiple red parts.
From a distance, it looked like red twin-tails.
The design of the chest and abdomen had been modified slightly, making it look very much like a furious dragon opening its mouth and roaring.
The design on the back was much more restrained.
"The shape of the shoulder armor is unusually extravagant," Selene commented.
Selene's evaluation was correct.
The shoulder armor incorporated elements of traditional armor, and the front of the pauldrons on both sides faintly showed the design of black dragon heads.
Above the shoulder armor were also purple crystal spike designs, with several colors used to distinguish the layers.
There were skirt armor sections in both the front and back. The rear skirt armor even had an opened-up explosive armor effect.
The side skirt armor was also quite large. Its surface likewise had red coating, and black stripe patterns were added to the red parts at the bottom.
The design on the back looked very much like a bow.
Or, more precisely, it was a bow.
Only, this bow had another function as well—it could be used as a flying device.
The feet and ankle armor also had spike designs.
In short, the entire armor design emphasized one thing: spikes!
Then came the weapon section.
As Lü Bu's weapon, of course it had to be the Heaven Halberd.
The entire Heaven Halberd was mainly red, but with slight differences in shade. The handle was dark red, while the blade of the halberd was bright crimson.
The Halberd was about one and a half heads taller than the armor itself.
Everyone stopped drawing and gathered in front of the board to look at the design.
There was no other reason.
This armor was ridiculously flashy!
"A rose with thorns!" Lucy said with her mouth open, unable to help sighing in admiration.
"This one! It has to be this one!"
Erza was more excited than anyone else, so excited that she did not even care about the other drawing Reedus had made for Raizel.
Raizel told Erza not to rush and had her compare the two drawings first.
Although this was called an armor design contest, the final decision still belonged to Erza.
The other design was a white dragon concept.
Of course, it did not include an actual dragon.
Between Lü Bu and the white dragon, Erza chose Lü Bu.
When she asked Raizel what this armor should be called...he was stumped.
They could not exactly call it Lü Bu Armor.
After struggling for a while, Raizel said, "Since there's a dragon-head design, and the main color is black, let's call it the Ink Dragon Armor."
Raizel knew very well that this armor was a little too extravagant, so he added,
"During the forging process, some parts can be slightly reduced or modified. It still depends on the blacksmith."
Armor was forged in separate parts and then assembled together at the end.
Raizel had previously watched the forging process for Erza's armor before.
The blacksmith Erza hired could absolutely be considered one of the best in the Kingdom of Fiore.
But...
Raizel felt there was an even better candidate.