Far away by the sea, Anmi had just finished a fight and was standing obediently beside Mirajane when he suddenly sneezed hard.
Mirajane's gaze swept over him.
He did not even have time to rub his nose before snapping to attention.
Poor little Anmi.
He had grown up under the rule of both the great demon king and the little demon king!
...
Bang!
Elysia slammed her hand down on the buzzer so hard the seat nearly sank, then lifted her chin proudly and shouted in a ringing voice as Levy looked delighted and Capricorn looked alarmed,
"Cana Alberona!"
A green checkmark instantly appeared on the screen in the dead silence.
"WHAT?!"
"What?!"
Two shocked cries rang out at the same time as both Levy and Capricorn stared in disbelief.
Capricorn's reaction was pure amazement at how difficult the question had been, along with genuine confusion over why the answer was Cana.
Levy's, on the other hand, was shock on multiple levels.
She was stunned that the answer really was Cana, stunned by what that answer implied, and also felt the deep satisfaction of a gossip craving being fully fed.
Levy and Capricorn both turned toward Elysia with ears practically perked straight up, wearing the same intensely sincere expression of people who very much wanted more tea.
Elysia showed absolutely no regard for her little brother's privacy and cheerfully explained, "Anmi really likes Aunt Cana. That carefree, rebellious style of his? He copied it from her. Ever since he was five or six, he's been making a fuss about wanting to 'marry' Aunt Cana."
Levy swallowed hard, then quietly asked, "If I counted right, that would make Cana around... thirty-five in seventeen years?"
Elysia nodded and said with feeling, "Yeah, but Aunt Cana will still be super cool then. And she'll look incredibly sexy too."
Levy's thoughts turned into complete mush.
Capricorn sighed regretfully and said, "What a shame. I never could have guessed that."
Levy finally snapped back to herself and burst out laughing. "Well, at least we got one back!"
But the next instant, the slide beneath her started moving, and her chair pitched upward again.
She wobbled in alarm and cried, "Wait, why am I going up too?!"
The host's voice answered, "This is an individual match. One person wins, two people go up."
Levy slumped in despair, clutching the sides of her seat and complaining, "What do you mean by an individual match...?"
"Honestly, that term is not that hard to understand," Capricorn said, still calm even as he was being lifted too. He even had the nerve to mock her.
"How exactly should I explain the phrase 'individual match' to you...?"
"Shut up! I just asked casually!"
"Next question: Who is the mother of Anne and Angela?"
Levy's eyes lit up.
Mirajane, obviously! How could it be anyone else?
But the very next second, she remembered Elysia sitting beside her and suddenly wasn't so sure anymore...
Elysia, meanwhile, slapped the buzzer without a moment's hesitation.
Capricorn reacted just as fast and hit his own.
This time, Capricorn actually got priority, and Elysia ground her teeth in annoyance.
Leaning back with one leg crossed over the other, Capricorn smirked. "I may not have lived in the future, but questions like this do not always require firsthand knowledge. All you need to do is look at the women currently close to Ankh, then reason your way through them one by one, eliminating candidates until the truth remains."
He lifted his chin smugly. "My guess is Princess Hisui."
"Incorrect—"
"Huh?!"
"Idiot," Elysia mouthed silently, then immediately hit the buzzer and gave the correct answer.
"Correct."
The moment the voice confirmed it, both Levy's and Capricorn's chairs rose even higher, nearly vertical over the spinning blade pit below.
By now, Levy had gone numb.
If the questions had actually been intelligence-based, she would not have missed every single one.
But instead of testing intelligence, this thing was basically force-feeding her future gossip until her brain melted.
...
The "quiz" only got more intense after that.
Under repeated assaults from the questions—and with Elysia taking every chance to "help" by dumping even more shocking family secrets on her—Levy somehow managed to survive to the end.
In the end, it was Capricorn himself who slipped and fell into the saw pit.
Fortunately, kind-hearted as ever, Elysia cut the blades apart with one strike and pulled the black goat out.
After freeing Levy as well, Elysia finally used the key to forcibly shut Capricorn's gate.
"Aunt Levy." Elysia laid a hand on Levy's shoulder and looked at her with complete sincerity.
Levy stared up at the taller girl.
She knew exactly what was coming and answered weakly, "Don't worry. I won't tell anyone."
Not that she had the courage to tell anyone anyway.
By the end of that game, she had learned enough gossip about Ankh, Natsu, Lucy, Gray, Juvia, Cana, and half the people she knew to make her scalp tingle!
What intelligence quiz?
It had been one giant truth-or-dare confession dump!
...
With another battle decided, the main battlefield in Leo's domain was still locked in fierce combat.
Natsu and Loki were fighting evenly.
Now that he was no longer bound to Lucy and had also been strengthened by Eclipse, Loki's power was on a completely different level.
His black flames carried the power to swallow a human's sanity whole, forcing Natsu to activate Dragon Force just to match him blow for blow.
The constant collisions of their fire were making the ancient structure around them tremble without end.
Natsu and Loki's fight aside, Ankh had been following Ophiuchus's magic power and eventually made his way deep into the building, into a bizarre corridor.
The walls were a dark crimson, the passageway long and narrow, with a suffocating atmosphere that pressed down on the mind.
Staring into the depths of the corridor, Ankh saw a tall figure step out from the shadows.
She wore a fitted nurse's uniform and had long dark green hair.
A patient chart was tucked under one arm, but the expression on her face was all wrong. It was twisted into a cruel, almost delighted smile.
"Compared to before, you really don't look very good now," Ankh said at once.
He immediately recognized her.
This was Eclipse-corrupted Ophiuchus.
The old Ophiuchus had been like a cold, detached nun on the outside, but beneath that she had been warm and caring.
The woman before him now radiated hostility, with a vicious smile hanging at the corner of her lips at all times.
A violent glint flashed through Ophiuchus's eyes as she sneered. "Say whatever you like. I'm not your servant anymore!"
"I never treated you like one," Ankh replied without hesitation.
Ever since meeting Lucy, and partly because of Lucy's influence, he had always treated Ophiuchus as family.
Even before Lucy arrived, he had still treated her well, if only as a highly capable combat partner.
But clearly, Ophiuchus had never seen it that way.
"What a nice thing to say. In the end, you only ever coveted the power of the Celestial Spirits!"
A syringe appeared in Ophiuchus's hand, filled with violet liquid bombs.
She pushed the plunger, and countless liquid explosives shot toward Ankh in a dense barrage.
"You never used to joke around with medical tools like that," Ankh said as he dodged through the blasts, his smile fading as his voice turned sharp.
"I'll beat you awake, Ophiuchus!"
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