The Elemental Sorceress

Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER — FOURTEEN

De Morte Deam

When the team arrives back in the evening, Nova begins to compile the information. She sends them off to get some rest while she works. It was hard to think straight with several bodies hovering. Most of her best work was done in solitude anyway.

She hunches over the table as she tries to organize everything they learned. Freed and Evergreen had snuck their way into the underground fighting ring. They found out that it was run by the mysterious leader of De Morte Deam— the point of it was to strengthen the guild members.

One thing stuck out to Nova when she asked about the magic they saw. Freed told her that there was one man in the ring that would take on opponent after opponent. He had magic unlike Freed had ever seen before, they called it 'decay'. The man didn't seem to utter any words only relying on his sword. But as soon as the blade made contact with anything it began to wither away into nothing. To the element wizard, this was deemed very important because her mother's murderer used the same magic.

When they were on a mission together, the man came out of nowhere and struck Nova. Though her mother quickly counteracted it with her healing abilities. Several other men had jumped out from the trees to join in— they spoke of a hit placed on Nova.

The man lashed out again, but Vera took the hit. The sword went straight through her heart. That was the first time Nova had tasted pure rage and pain. As her mother died in her arms, her control was lost. When she regained her senses all she saw was a massive crater lined with bodies.

She took her mother's body and high tailed it back home. The event was too traumatic for her to tell her family, and not to mention the immense guilt she felt. After that, she made sure her brother's weakness was taken care of. She did not want to lose him like her mom.

Nova sighs scrubbing a hand across her face. She needed to focus on the task at hand. The memories of her mother's death wouldn't help her here.

She looks back down at the small board. The second pair– Bickslow and Wendy– discovered an underground network. They allowed themselves to be taken by a group of men. It turned out that De Morte Deam was stealing innocent people of all ages and brainwashing them. They needed more people for their crusade and resorted to kidnapping. If the person they took didn't have a good enough magic ability they were forced into slavery.

The information they all had gathered seemed to get worse as it went on.

Laxus was able to scrounge up bits and pieces of information. He overheard several conversations pertaining to plans against the Wizard Saints. There wasn't too much detail, unfortunately. All he knew was the group planned to strike soon, and they were going to start with something grand.

Most of the intelligence they gathered didn't connect, but it was something to start with. Tomorrow she'd send the team back out to their previous positions. While they worked on that, Nova would be meeting up with Orion to get information up close.

She had a gut feeling about it— it was a terrible idea. If she went to their guildhall it was practically walking into a trap. This wouldn't stop her though, because, in the end, all that mattered was stopping them.

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"You're going to join Sparky today," Nova says to the Iron Dragon Slayer while they finish breakfast.

Gajeel narrows his eyes as if trying to read her mind. "And what will you be doing, Princess?"

The brunette doesn't bother giving him an answer. She shrugs as she gets up from her spot. He watches her like a hawk as she washes her plate. Something about her felt off.