Chapter 74

The Stellar Spirit King is the 74th chapter of Hiro Mashima's Fairy Tail.

Lucy is determined to protect his friend Loke as his body vanishing indicating his last moments. Loke tells her that it is futile but Lucy just won't give up. Lucy try to force the gate to theCelestial Spirit World open, she does not believe that proteting a friend is a sin. Suddenly the time stops, Celestial Spirit King appears. Lucy tries to convince the King that Loke is innocent, but the King denies all the facts referring to Loke as an "old friend". But when he hears that Loke was just protecting Aries, he changes his verdict and allows Loke back to the Spirit World and says his punishment is to protect Lucy, her loyal friend Lucy. As the King returns to his World, time resumes and Loke thanking Lucy from the bottom of his heart, leaves for the Spirit World and confers his key to Lucy...

Summary
Loke is vanishing and tells Lucy to give his regards to Fairy Tail, but Lucy doesn’t let him go, and tries to open his gate forcibly. She says she can’t stand the loss of her friend, and uses all of her Magic power to open the gate. Loke tries to stop her, but she persists. Loke keeps trying to make her give up, but Lucy won’t hear of it. Her power starts surging out like never before. Lucy is hell-bent on changing the rules, and after she shouts this, time stops, and the Celestial Spirit King arrives.

The King refers to Loke as old friend, and voices his crime. He says it doesn’t matter if the fault is direct or indirect, he cannot return to their kingdom. Loke is surprioed to see that the King himself came to deal with the situation. Lucy then interferes and saying that the punishment is going too far. She says that Loke has been suffering for three years, for his friend’s sake. The King says that he is pained by his old friend's fate, and Lucy says that he isn’t “old” he is right there, before his very eyes. She tells to the "Mustache Man" that Loke did nothing wrong and that she won’t accept anything but his innocence. At this point, Loke shouts that he wants to repent, but Lucy yells that he can’t since it is not a sin to care for your friends. Using all of her strength, she summons all her Zodiac Spirits and Plue at once, an action which would have killed another Celestial Mage.

Lucy however cannot hold them for long, but the Spirit King concords that maybe the law is in error. After all, Leo did what he did to protect Aries, and Lucy did the same thing to protect Loke. The king doesn’t want this bond to be broken, so he makes an exception for this time. He grants Loke permission to return to the Celestial Spirit World. If Leo wants to repent, he should live on and protect Lucy, as he believes her to be a friend of such worth. Time then restarts, and Loke thanking Lucy returns to the Spirit World.

Characters
*Note: Bold+Italicized=First Appearence