Fairy Tail: Lost One

Chapter 51: He Just Wanted a Nap

Rudra was sleeping peacefully beneath the shade of a massive tree when a familiar voice echoed inside his mind.

"Host? Wake up, my dear Host."

Without even opening his eyes, Rudra frowned.

"What is it, System?" he mumbled in an irritated, half-asleep voice. "Can’t you see I’m fucking sleeping?"

The System was silent for a moment before replying with equal irritation.

"I can see that, you jackass."

It took a deep breath—if a System could even breathe—before continuing in a calmer tone.

"I wouldn’t have woken you up if this wasn’t important."

Still only half-awake, Rudra lazily replied, "Then what are you doing? Spit it out already so I can go back to sleep."

The System cursed Rudra under its breath before answering.

"Someone is trying to summon your consciousness from somewhere. I’ve blocked the summons multiple times, but whoever it is clearly doesn’t understand the meaning of ’no.’ They just keep trying. So... what should I do?"

The System looked at Rudra for an answer.

Only to realize...

The idiot had already fallen back asleep.

"..."

Veins practically popped on the System’s nonexistent forehead.

"HOST!!!" it roared.

Rudra jerked slightly and shouted back without opening his eyes.

"WHAT?!"

"Did you even hear what I just said?"

"...Yeah."

The sleepy response came after a long pause.

The System narrowed its metaphorical eyes.

"So... should I let them pull your consciousness?"

"...Yeah..."

Rudra mumbled before drifting back to sleep almost instantly.

"..."

With a resigned sigh, it finally stopped resisting the mysterious summons.

------

In the next instant, Rudra’s consciousness was pulled away.

Still half-asleep, he suddenly found himself standing in an endless white space.

His sleepy eyes slowly blinked open.

Stretching as he yawned, he looked around.

The vast white expanse was filled with countless clocks of every shape and size, all suspended in midair. Some were ancient grandfather clocks, some elegant pocket watches, others modern digital displays, while many looked unlike anything ever created by human hands.

Interwoven among them floated countless metallic gears, screws, springs, cogs, and intricate mechanical parts. They drifted through the air in silent harmony, constantly assembling and disassembling themselves as though maintaining the very machinery of reality.

The rhythmic ticking of innumerable clocks echoed throughout the endless white world.

Rudra scratched his head lazily.

"...Huh."

He looked around one last time before letting out an annoyed sigh.

"I was having such a good nap too..."

The System spoke up.

"You do realize your body is still asleep, right?"

Rudra ignored the comment. Instead, he turned toward a certain spot and narrowed his eyes at what seemed to be empty space.

"How long are you planning to hide there and watch?" he asked calmly.

For a brief moment, nothing happened.

Then, a soft white light flickered where Rudra was looking. The glow grew brighter before taking the shape of a person.

Standing before him was an exceptionally beautiful man with pale white skin and long white hair that reached the floor. His hair was parted in the middle, with a long strand resting over his right shoulder and a shorter one framing the left side of his face. His light-blue eyes were calm and unreadable, giving him an almost otherworldly presence.

For a few seconds, both Rudra and the unknown figure simply stared at each other in complete silence — sizing one another up, the way two people do when neither is quite sure whether the other is a threat, an ally, or something in between.

The silence stretched.

Finally, the figure spoke.

"Hello, traveler from another world." He conjured two chairs out of thin air with a lazy flick of his hand, settling into one. Rudra, after a beat of hesitation, took the other. "My name is Chronoa, and I am the G—"

"Femboy."

Chronoa stopped mid-sentence.

The silence that followed was a different kind entirely — thick, tense, the air itself seeming to hold its breath.

"...I’m sorry," Chronoa said slowly, "what did you just—"

"You don’t need to explain anything." Rudra raised a hand, shaking his head with the solemn gravity of a man delivering news at a funeral. "I understand everything now."

"You understand nothing, I was literally in the middle of—"

Rudra looked at him, eyes suspiciously glassy. "I won’t judge you for this."

"There’s nothing to judge, I am the God of Time, I simply have a—"

"Shh." Rudra closed his eyes, spreading his arms wide as though preparing to embrace the entire concept of the universe. "Because I am a firm believer in femboy supremacy."

Chronoa opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again, clearly cycling through several possible responses, none of which felt adequate to the situation he had somehow found himself in.

"I have existed since before the concept of time itself," he said, very slowly, as if reciting it to himself for reassurance. "I have watched galaxies form and collapse. I have spoken with beings whose single thought could unmake a universe."

"Uh huh."

"And somehow this"— he gestured at Rudra with both hands, at a complete loss —"is the conversation I am currently having."

"History will remember this as the day you accepted yourself."

"I don’t need to accept anyth—"

"Growth takes courage." Rudra placed a hand solemnly over his own chest. "I’m proud of you."

For the first time in his extremely long existence, the God of Time felt a genuine, overwhelming urge to punch someone directly in the face.

He restrained himself. Barely. Partly out of principle. Mostly because something was blocking his divine authority from reading through his Host. No matter how hard he tried, an invisible force seemed to shield every secret Rudra possessed.

So instead, he simply sat there. Composed. Dignified.

Radiating quiet, seething fury.

"...Are you quite finished?" he asked, in the flattest voice he could manage.

"For now." Rudra opened one eye, leaning back slightly in his chair. "So. Why’d you summon me here?"

"You don’t belong in this world," Chronoa said, recovering some of his composure. "I’d advise you leave as soon as possible."

Rudra let out a low whistle. "Wow. What a smart god. Telling me things I already knew." He looked Chronoa dead in the eye, all traces of humor gone from his face. "As for leaving — can’t do that right now. I’ll be gone in a few months, though. Eventually."

"A few months." Chronoa considered this, unbothered. "I wouldn’t mind that, so long as you don’t cause trouble. But the other gods —" he paused, choosing his words carefully, "— they won’t take kindly to an unknown stranger wandering through their world."

Something shifted in the air.

"Then tell them not to bother me," Rudra said, voice dropping into something low and unmistakably dangerous, "and I won’t bother them. Otherwise—"

A thin thread of demonic haki bled out from him, unhurried, almost lazy in how it moved. The space around his chair fractured — hairline cracks spreading silently across the white void, like glass under pressure.

"—they’ll die."

Chronoa’s arm shot up on pure instinct, already halfway through summoning a defense before his mind had finished processing the threat.

Then, just as suddenly, the pressure vanished.

Rudra smiled, cheerful and warm, as though the last ten seconds hadn’t happened at all. "Anyway. Nice meeting you, Chronoa. God of femboys."

Chronoa lowered his arm slowly, jaw tight, saying nothing.

"Can you send me back now?" Rudra stretched, already half-yawning. "I’ve got sleep to catch up on."

Chronoa waved a hand without a word. Rudra’s consciousness flickered and vanished from the chair, leaving it empty.

Alone now, Chronoa slumped back into his seat, staring at the space where the stranger had been sitting moments ago.

A tiny fragment of the dark, demonic haki Rudra had released still lingered in the air, refusing to fade even after Rudra himself was long gone.

For the first time in countless years, the God of Time found himself questioning whether letting someone go had truly been the right decision.

------

Meanwhile, not far away from Rudra’s sleeping body, a man tore through the underbrush at a dead sprint, his ragged breaths echoing through the forest. Boots pounded against roots and fallen branches as he forced himself onward.

Behind him, the forest erupted with pursuit.

More than fifty men crashed through the trees in relentless formation, their footsteps blending into a thunderous roar that drew ever closer.

The man fleeing was Leonardo El Vandimion.

Dark hair, once neatly tied, hung past his shoulders in tangled strands, several locks plastered against his sweat-soaked face. One eye—the eye that allowed him to see farther and with impossible clarity—remained narrowed in concentration, constantly scanning the terrain ahead. His noble’s coat, once immaculate with its polished silver buttons, was torn at the shoulder and streaked with dirt and blood.

His legs burned. His lungs burned worse. He didn’t dare slow down.

Then his foot caught on something solid.

He went down hard, sprawling into the dirt with a grunt, rolling instinctively to see what had tripped him.

A body. Motionless, slumped against the base of a tree.

For a fraction of a second, his mind offered the grim possibility — a corpse — before the thought was violently cut off by the sound of footsteps, dozens of them, closing in fast through the trees behind him.

No time to think. No time to check.

He scrambled up and dove behind a cluster of moss-covered boulders, pressing himself flat against the stone, breath held, heart hammering against his ribs.

Leonardo had barely vanished into the trees when a group of heavily armored men came into view, moving with the grim efficiency of soldiers who had done this before.

One crouched at the edge of the clearing, fingers brushing the disturbed earth. "This is where the trail ends."

Another stepped up beside him, scanning the treeline. "Then the bastard’s hiding somewhere close." He straightened, voice sharpening into command. "Spread out. Search the area."

The group dispersed, boots crunching through underbrush, blades drawn, eyes sweeping every shadow and hollow.

One of them drifted toward the cluster of boulders.

Behind the stone, Leonardo held his breath, willing his heart to slow, though it hammered louder in his ears with every step that drew nearer. The footsteps stopped just short of the boulder. He could hear the man breathing above him, close enough to touch.

The soldier began to lean around the rock.

"Found something!"

The shout came from across the clearing. The soldier above Leonardo paused, then turned and jogged toward the sound, abandoning the search without a second glance.

Leonardo exhaled, slow and shaking, relief flooding through his chest. He allowed himself a moment before curiosity got the better of him, and he eased his head just far enough around the boulder to see what had drawn them away.

His stomach dropped.

The man he’d tripped over. The one he’d been certain was a corpse.

Standing. Upright. Talking — arguing, from the look of it — though Leonardo was too far to make out the words. The soldiers had formed a loose ring around him, weapons half-raised, clearly unsure whether they’d found their target or an unrelated problem.

One of them decided he didn’t care either way.

The sword came up in a clean overhead arc, aimed to end things quickly.

What happened next, Leonardo would spend a long time afterward trying to properly remember, because his eyes simply hadn’t been fast enough to follow it.

The attacking soldier’s neck twisted a full hundred and eighty degrees in the space of a single heartbeat — no windup, no visible motion, just before and after with nothing connecting the two. It looked, impossibly, like the stranger hadn’t moved at all.

Then the second impossible thing happened.

The sword was no longer in the dead man’s hand. It was in Rudra’s.

He’d taken it in the same motion that broke the soldier’s neck, and before the body had even begun to fall, he was already turning, blade sweeping outward in one diagonal arc.

Every heads left their shoulders in near-perfect unison, the motion so clean and unhurried it barely looked like violence at all — more like a formality being observed.

But the slash didn’t stop there.

It kept going. Past the soldiers, past the clearing, out into the treeline beyond — and every tree in its path, for as far as Leonardo’s eyes could follow, split cleanly down the center and began, slowly, to fall.

Leonardo stared, pressed flat against the boulder, and found that his heart — which had been pounding from fear of the soldiers only moments ago — was now pounding for an entirely different reason.

The man turned.

Their eyes met, and for one suspended second, Leonardo felt certain his own head would join the others scattered across the clearing.

Then the stranger simply looked away, tossed the sword aside without a word, and dropped back down against the tree, already drifting off to sleep as though nothing had happened at all.

Whatever thread had been holding Leonardo upright finally snapped. His vision blurred, and exhaustion dragged him under into unconsciousness.