"Ice-Make: Shield!"
With her hands pressed together, layers of purple ice shields manifested before the black-haired mage, barely managing to intercept Goku's heavy fist. This woman was not only a master of the Lost Magic, Arc of Time, but she was also incredibly proficient in Ice-Make magic.
Goku could feel the difference immediately. The resistance offered by this purple ice was far greater than the structures Lyon had created. It was denser, reinforced by a much more potent magical will.
However, even these reinforced shields couldn't withstand the raw kinetic force behind Goku's strike. The purple barriers shattered one by one, the shockwave closing in on her body.
"Arc of Time!"
The woman reacted instantly. Her left hand activated a temporal magic circle, forcing the shattered fragments of ice to rewind back into their pristine, solid state, constantly replacing the defense Goku was breaking. Simultaneously, her right hand flared with a second magic circle: "Ice-Make: Rosen Krone!"
A massive thicket of purple ice roses erupted around Goku, their thorny vines lashing out like living serpents to entwine his limbs. The jagged thorns bit into his skin. Even with his divine physical conditioning and the protective shroud of his ki, Goku winced as the sharp points pricked at him.
It was an extraordinary spell. In the eyes of the black-haired mage, however, the result was horrifying. Rosen Krone was her mother Ur's ultimate technique—a move capable of lethally wounding a Wizard Saint. Yet this boy was taking it head-on, merely making a face as if he'd stepped on a lego, without a single drop of blood being drawn.
"Your ice is great, and your time magic is cool too," Goku said, taking a deep breath. "I guess I should get serious now!"
Realizing that his Eighth Form wasn't enough to bypass her temporal defenses, Goku prepared the final form of the Breath styles he had developed.
"Breath of Ki, Tenth Form: Descending Dragon!"
Goku unleashed a flurry of palm strikes. From the friction of his ki and magic, ethereal dragons erupted with deafening roars. These energy dragons didn't just shatter the ice roses surrounding him; they swarmed toward the woman from every direction.
She tried to manifest more temporal shields, but while she could block one direction, she couldn't defend against a 360-degree assault.
"AAAH!"
A scream tore from her throat as one of the ki-dragons slammed into her midsection. The impact sent her flying, coughing up blood before she lost consciousness mid-air.
Goku immediately dispelled the remaining dragons to ensure he didn't accidentally kill her. Since her ice magic had frozen the nearby sea into a solid floor, Goku walked across the ice, picked up the unconscious mage, and Apparated back to the village square.
The Tenth Form was immensely powerful, but its energy consumption was high—only slightly less than a full-power Kamehameha. While it lacked the raw planetary destruction of the beam, its homing properties and omni-directional nature made it nearly impossible to dodge.
For Goku, combat was an art. While he could technically blow up a planet, he knew that wouldn't help against someone with specialized mental magic or unique hax. His training across different worlds was about filling those gaps—ensuring he had a tool for every problem.
"Who is she?" Gray and Lyon asked in unison, staring at the defeated woman in Goku's arms.
"It's Zalty!" Goku explained. "She looks different, but her ki is exactly the same."
"Transformation Magic!" Happy shouted, raising a paw. "Don't forget, Mirajane is an expert at that. She can turn into anyone or anything."
"Whoa, she can turn into anything? Like Oolong or Puar?" Goku thought of his old friends from the Shape-Shifting Academy. He had never been interested in it before, but now that he was studying Transfiguration at Hogwarts and looking into the Great Ape Animagus transformation, he realized learning more about magical shapeshifting might be useful.
"This person is definitely a major threat," Lucy said, summoning Virgo to bind the woman with heavy magical chains. Using a disguise to manipulate a mage into unsealing a disaster like Deliora was the hallmark of a Dark Mage.
...
Ultear groaned as she drifted back to consciousness. Every inch of her body screamed in pain; she was severely injured.
'This brat... his strength is insane. Only the Master could face him,' she thought bitterly. As the leader of the Seven Kin of Purgatory, she had honed her magic to the level of a Wizard Saint, yet she had been dismantled by an unknown child from Fairy Tail.
She opened her eyes to see the mages and the useful idiot Lyon staring down at her. Her mind began racing, weaving a web of lies to manipulate her way out of this.
But before she could utter a single syllable of her fabricated story, she saw a strange, shimmering light in the boy's eyes. Then, he began to speak—and the words that came out of his mouth made her heart stop.
"You're from the Grimoire Heart guild. The leader of the Seven Kin of Purgatory. Your name is Ultear, and you're Ur's daughter," Goku said plainly.
Ultear's eyes went wide. How could he possibly know?
"You joined Grimoire Heart because you felt abandoned by your mother. You've been manipulating Jellal, controlling the Tower of Heaven, and you even infiltrated the Magic Council as an observer. You're searching for the Black Wizard Zeref because you want to use the ultimate Arc of Time to travel back to a time before your mother left you..."