chapter 25: The Reason I Fight
"I don't understand... How is your magical power increasing?" Juvia asked, forcing herself to her feet. Her face was tense, her usually vibrant complexion turning pale. "It's even greater than mine now. Just what the heck are you?"
A person's magical energy was not supposed to simply spike in the midst of battle. Every Mage possessed an internal, metaphysical reservoir known as the Container—a vessel that stored and refined processed magic particles called Ethernano.
Casting spells depleted the Container. Once drained, ambient Ethernano from the environment would gradually diffuse back into the body, slowly restoring the Mage's reserves.
While the Container could be expanded through rigorous training and meditation, it was a slow, grueling process.
But Juvia was witnessing something that broke the fundamental laws of magic. It was an anomaly that could only be described as impossible.
"I'm a Dragon Slayer!" Gajeel bared his teeth in a wide, feral smile. His entire body was enveloped in a dense, metallic grey aura.
"You said you didn't believe in dragons, right?"
The water pooling around his feet began to tremble violently. The floating debris around him shook uncontrollably, vibrating against the sheer weight of his pressure.
"Then get ready… because I'm about to show you just how real dragons are."
Standing several feet apart, the distance between them evaporated in an instant.
Gajeel threw out his arm, mimicking a brutal punch. As he executed the strike, his entire forearm transformed, reshaping into a massive, high-density iron club.
The iron dynamically extended outward, transforming his close-range punch into a devastating, mid-range apex attack.
This was Iron Dragon Slayer Magic—an ancient, specialized branch of Lost Magic that granted Gajeel the exact physiology and traits of an Iron Dragon.
It was not a mere utility or a simple spellcasting trick; it was a fundamental physical transformation. Through its mastery, he did not merely wield iron—his very flesh became living steel, allowing him to shape, bend, and dominate metal to his absolute will.
Before the crushing blow could connect, Juvia's body dissolved, shifting into the fluid properties of water itself. Gajeel's iron club phased right through her form, striking nothing but empty liquid.
"I said it before and I'll say it again—you can't hit me!" Juvia claimed.
It was a high-level technique born from her innate magic, allowing her to temporarily convert her physical body into pure water, letting physical attacks pass through her harmlessly.
"Oh, I'm well aware of how that stupid water form of yours works," Gajeel retorted.
Without breaking his momentum, His arm sprouted multiple smaller clubs from the end of the original beam.
The sudden, chaotic surface area disturbed Juvia's watery form violently, scattering her fluid body into a cloud of numerous droplets.
For a fraction of a second, all that remained intact was the upper half of her face.
Her severed expression drifted away in the spray. Yet, a moment later, the scattered droplets magnetically surged back together, coalescing around her core.
The water reshaped itself into her physical form, restoring Juvia back to normal.
"While you're in that water form, you can fluidly absorb damage," Gajeel went on, his voice dripping with confidence. "If a limb or even your face is shattered into droplets, you can easily pull those droplets back to your main body."
With a sharp snap, he retracted his arm. The iron dissolved, shifting seamlessly back into ordinary flesh and bone.
"However, that regeneration of yours needs a solid anchor to return to. Something like a torso or a leg. Meaning, if I overwhelm you fast enough, you'll have no choice but to abandon that spell entirely."
'He figured it out? But how? All the other people I've ever fought couldn't understand my magic at all!' Juvia's face hardened into an expression of grim defiance.
"That doesn't matter. For this entire corridor…" She dropped into a low crouch, placing both hands firmly on the ground.
She was establishing a physical anchor point, stabilizing her position for the massive environmental Ethernano shift that was about to happen.
"…is mine to command!" The water around them surged, violently rising up and coalescing around her form. It created a massive defensive dome composed of multiple interconnected, roaring whirlpools.
"You can't knock me down!" Juvia declared.
In truth, what Gajeel had deduced was half right. Her regeneration did indeed require a central physical anchor—a remaining part of her solid or concentrated form to act as a magnet pulling the scattered liquid back together.
But there was another, darker secret he had missed. If an attack was so massive, forceful, or widespread that it splattered one hundred percent of her body simultaneously into microscopic droplets, there would be no central anchor left to trigger the recall.
Her consciousness would scatter with the water, effectively resulting in permanent death as she simply became part of the environment.
Whether Gajeel knew this or not, Juvia didn't know. But it made one thing clear: this wasn't a battle to the death. It was just two people fighting for their own selfish reasons. Nothing more was needed in the Phantom Lord guild.
"Hah!" Gajeel slammed his foot onto the ground, splashing the rising water and fracturing the floorboards. Raising both arms, he commanded the iron structural pieces of the corridor to tear free and rise to his side.
The broken parts of the floor, which were also made of metal, levitated around him. Clenching his hands, the metal blended and morphed, transforming into dozens of floating, metallic fists.
"Haven't you heard?" Gajeel grinned. "A strong offense makes for an even stronger defense!"
Throwing out a blinding series of jabs, the manufactured iron fists shot forward, flying through the air directly toward Juvia's swirling dome.
Moving her fingers like a conductor, Juvia commanded one of the whirlpools to intercept, successfully swallowing and grinding down the incoming metal projectiles. However, not all of them were stopped.
One of the fists went off course, intentionally missing her dome completely and hurtling off into the far distance.
Before Juvia could fully question the strange miss, Gajeel made a sudden gesture with his arms. A massive shard of metal manifested beneath his feet, expanding violently upward and launching him high into the air.
As he soared through the upper reaches of the chamber, his mind calculated his next move.
The core combat application of his magic relied on restructuring his own anatomy into instruments of war, transforming his limbs into high-density steel weapons, or constructs.
While highly optimized for crushing close-quarters combat, the materialized iron did not require flesh to remain useful, allowing for sudden mid-range extensions.
Furthermore, as a Dragon Slayer, he could replenish his depleted Magic Container and physical stamina by literally consuming his own element.
Raw ore, manufactured weapons, metal walls, or structural chains—he could eat it all.
But the fuel had to originate from an external source and be physically ingested through the mouth; he could not consume iron he had created using his own magic.
Using his enhanced senses, which far outclassed those of any normal human, he positioned himself perfectly multiple feet above the vortex.
"He's going to attack while airborne!" Juvia quickly realized.
"Iron Dragon's Spear!" Gajeel roared.
His leg transformed into a dense, rigid iron pole. Rather than a standard piercing strike, he utilized the extension to swing the elongated metal limb like a heavy whip, maximizing centrifugal force to shatter her defenses from an unpredictable angle.
Just like before, one of the roaring whirlpools shifted, intersecting Gajeel's spell. The collision resulted in a deafening metallic bang that echoed through the corridor.
"Tch!" Gajeel grunted, pulling back his leg as it reverted to normal flesh.
"I told you before, you can't hit me!" Juvia yelled up at him.
"I don't need you to tell me what I can and can't do!" Gajeel snapped back. Despite the barrier, a wild smile split across his face. "You wanna know something, Juvia?!" He clenched his hand into a tight, heavy fist.
"What?" Juvia asked, her patience wearing thin.
"It took me a while, but I'm starting to figure out your magic!" A cold, steel-silver magical aura leaked from his body, surging downward and pooling into his clenched fist.
"You can't weaponize your water and defend with it at the same time!" Gajeel's fist was completely engulfed in the dense aura as he utilized Ethernano Infusion.
Gravity took hold, sending him plummeting at a high velocity. He wasn't aiming for a weak spot or trying to bypass her guard—he wanted to clash head-on with the absolute strongest point of her whirlpools.
"RAAAH!"
The instant Gajeel's attack landed, a massive shockwave traveled through the dome of water, causing the liquid flooding the corridor to shake and tremble violently.
At first, Gajeel thought the barrier would shatter beneath his immense strength. Instead, his eyes widened in sheer shock.
"W-what?!"
The dome of water was completely intact. Beneath his fist lay not just one whirlpool, but three. She had stacked all of them to intercept him.
"I am well aware of your power—I felt it firsthand. But you made one mistake," Juvia said. An intense, deep blue aura erupted around her body, radiating her magical pressure. "And that was assuming I could only block with a single whirlpool. What did you say earlier? A strong offense makes for a strong defense?"
A faint smile touched her lips. "Well, in my case, a strong defense makes for an even stronger offense."
"Tsk! It doesn't matter," Gajeel growled, a snarl ripping from his throat. "All I gotta do is smash this thing into teeny, tiny pieces!"
Activating Ethernano Infusion to its absolute limit, both of his fists became completely engulfed in a dense, silver-gray aura.
"Tchah!" Gajeel roared, unleashing a continuous, blinding barrage of punches. With each strike, a deafening crack echoed through the corridor as the dome vibrated under the assault.
Juvia clenched her teeth, pouring more of her remaining magic into the barrier to reinforce its defense.
"Ha! Hah! Hah! C'mon! C'mon! Break!" Gajeel continued to yell, maintaining the frantic pace.
After a solid thirty seconds of non-stop pounding, he finally stopped, dropping back slightly and panting heavily from the exertion.
"Dang it! What's this thing made of anyway?" Gajeel spat. "There's no way this is just water."
"Oh, I assure you, it is water," Juvia replied.
Skywater Magic was a specialized, environmental variation of Water Magic, and Juvia's innate power. Unlike traditional elemental magic, she could not generate water from nothing.
Instead, she harvested, condensed, and concentrated the ambient moisture from the air, surfaces, and the surrounding environment into a manipulable liquid form.
Because her magic relied entirely on the available moisture in the area, her overall power output was bound to her surroundings—and inside this damp, enclosed corridor, she was nearly invincible.
"Okay, I admit it. Your power is pretty cool. In fact, it's way more flexible than mine," Gajeel admitted honestly. His wild grin returned. "But you made one mistake, Juvia."
Right then, a sharp crack resonated through the dome. A shocked expression flashed across Juvia's face just before a loud shattering sound echoed.
"You were so focused on me that you left yourself wide open for my sneak attack," Gajeel smirked.
Quickly spinning around, Juvia's eyes dilated as she saw a metallic fist violently bursting through the rear of her dome, hurtling toward her at immense speed.
In that split second, she understood exactly what had happened. The metal fist that had missed her domain earlier and gone off course hadn't crashed into the wall at all.
Gajeel had manipulated its trajectory, sending it looping around the far reaches of the corridor. It had kept going and going, gaining velocity and momentum with each passing second while he kept her entirely occupied with his frontal assault.
Normally, a single stray projectile wouldn't smash through her defenses. But because she had poured one hundred percent of her focus and magical energy into blocking Gajeel's barrage, she had completely forgotten about the looping fist.
And now, it was too late.
The metal fist struck her head-on, colliding brutally with her face. The force of the impact was so immense that it launched her body backward. Deprived of her control, the grand water dome completely collapsed, bursting outward into a tidal wave as Gajeel dropped down from the air.
Juvia's body spun through the spray, skidding violently across the flooded floor. She groveled in the water, groaning from the pain as she gasped for air.
"I finally got you. Again."
Gajeel strode forward through the puddles, reaching down to grab her by the collar of her damp clothing. With effortless strength, he lifted the young girl up with one hand.
"It's over, Juvia. You lose."
Opening her eyes, Juvia met Gajeel's gaze face-to-face. A thin stream of blood dripped from her nose, staining her pale skin.
"I don't understand…" she whispered.
"Huh?" Gajeel grunted, leaning in.
"I don't understand you, Gajeel…" Juvia repeated, her voice trembling but soft. "Why? Why is it that you fight? If you and I walk the same path, we can both achieve our goals. It's simple: if you help me, I will help you. All I want is to hunt down the shinobi of the Ebonveil Clan and eradicate them. I want to make them pay for what they did to me…"
She looked at him with desperate eyes. "If you help me secure that vengeance, I will help you track down that dragon of yours. It is the only logical conclusion. You have absolutely no reason to refuse."
In her mind, she recalled the conversation that had sparked this entire clash. [Please. Let's end this. Despite what I said earlier, I have no desire to fight you.]
"That is the entire reason I agreed to fight you," Juvia confessed. "Even though I acted like I didn't want to, it was all a lie. I knew that in this guild—in this place—words are meaningless. No one cares about your opinion if you lack the strength to force that opinion into reality. So answer me... why is it that you fight?"
"Why do I fight, huh…" Gajeel repeated, turning the question over in his mind.
Opening his grip, he let go of her collar, letting her drop back to the ground.
Juvia fell to her knees, letting out a few rough coughs before quickly wiping the blood from her nose.
"You want to know why I fight? The only reason I fight now is because I have to," Gajeel spoke up, his gaze locking onto her with a quiet, burning intensity. "If you'd asked me before, I would've told you I fight for nothing but the pure joy of it. And in a way, that's still true."
He paused, his thoughts drifting back to when he had met a certain boy in the guild hall. A boy with those strange, vivid fuchsia eyes.
"But then I met someone. He was pathetic, honestly. He had no redeeming qualities, he was constantly questioning the value of his own life, and it was annoying just to hear him babble on. I treated him like a complete joke. I punched him. I badmouthed him to his face. But despite all of that…"
An echo of Albion's voice resonated in his memories: [So… is it okay if we start… right here?]
"…he still held out his hand to me without a single shred of hesitation," Gajeel said, his voice lowering with fierce pride. "That is just who he is. So when you come in here and tell me you're going to hunt him down just because of some stupid last name? It frustrates me. It ticks me off."
Gajeel clenched his fist, the iron in his veins humming. "I am going to protect him because he and I are guildmates. I will protect him no matter what, because he is the only human who has ever held out his hand to me in pure kindness. That's why I know... the reason I fight isn't a mistake!"