Even if Otherworld might have methods to deal with the Dark Destroyer, it would still strengthen him greatly. "Hahaha, who can kill me, who can kill me, who—ah!" Belial laughed so hard he was almost shrieking, but his laughter soon froze and his eyes widened.
He stared with his massive dragon eyes. "Why isn't the progress bar moving? Do you need a subscription too?" He ground his teeth while looking at the system display. It really was stuck at one percent.
The remaining ninety-nine percent was like a sighing wall, completely unmoving. It was as if it had just started and then died on the spot, stuck forever waiting for a signal.
He started cursing the system wreckage in his head. Just as he was about to stomp on its corpse, he got a bit more feedback. "That special power from before? Where am I supposed to find something like that?"
The template needed a key, namely that special power, to unlock and load onto him. Belial scratched his head, unable to recall eating anything particularly strange. He had eaten plenty of odd things, but none stood out.
Many of them had weird shapes to begin with, and he was too lazy to remember them. Often, a single breath attack meant he never even saw them clearly. That fragment?
He naturally thought of the mysterious fragment from the ice cave, then shook his huge head. Probably not. If it were, it would not have surfaced only now.
The system message had just appeared, which meant the absorption of that mysterious power had happened recently. So it must have been something he ate not long ago. That meant some special monster from the recent beast tide.
That explanation made sense. Otherworld having strange species with unique powers was normal. But where was he supposed to find it again? Who was it anyway, and why could it not have looked a bit more distinctive so he would remember?
He kicked the system a few more times, squeezing out one last piece of information. "There will be a prompt once a certain concentration of that power is detected? Fine then," Belial said, forcing himself to calm down.
His lifespan was long. He could search slowly, and eventually he would find it. Having just eaten a full meal and feeling reasonably satisfied, Belial slowly closed his eyes and covered himself with his wings, snow settling over his massive body.
All of this was watched from afar by someone else.
The smell of blood was obvious now. Belial had always had a sharp nose, far better than any hunting hound, and his powerful senses let him separate every trace of scent in the air with ease. The smell of blood in particular was always marked as a top priority to him.
High in the sky, his body was wrapped in rushing air currents and covered by thick thunderclouds as his wide wings tore through the heavens. Even so, the presence known as Messenger of Wind and Snow still delivered all kinds of information to his senses, and the tiny changes in the elements around him were clear. "It seems to be far ahead. The elements are in chaos, and the blood smell is coming from there."
Blood alone did not interest him much, except when he was eating. But from what he could detect, he could roughly judge the situation ahead. A massive fight was happening, the kind with a very large scale.
There were likely many monsters involved. Since he had eaten so many before, he could easily tell how many different kinds of monster blood were mixed into the similar scents. "Could it be that a beast tide is fighting itself? But I have seen so many groups before, and I just ate one not long ago. I did not see anyone fighting."
Strangely enough, these beast tides were very united. Even if a rabbit was right under a ferocious monster's feet, it would not attack it, and when facing his attacks, they would work together against him. Carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores all mixed together, strong and weak alike, standing united against him as if he were some great villain.
It made him feel awkward, as if he were trying to destroy the world. He was not doing that. He just wanted to eat all of them.
"Well, if they are fighting, they are fighting. I can watch from the side and take advantage of it." Belial beat his wings, slowly dropping from the thick clouds toward the ground. He was already very skilled with Wind Magic, since he used it so often.
Otherwise, at his speed, just flying around once would create wind pressure strong enough to blow most things on the ground into the air, like Rodan in movies. He would be a moving natural disaster, dangerous just by existing. Even now, if he got too close, the ultra-dense wind pressure around his body could grind rocks into fragments.
"Hm?" Belial's pupils shrank slightly.
Cracks had appeared on his snowfield-only white outer shell without him noticing. They were tiny compared to his massive body, but they were real. This should not have been possible.
He had always thought this layer was well hidden and reliable, so he had not paid much attention to it. He simply kept controlling it in the background with Ice Element. In essence, it was just a highly condensed layer of Ice Element, but it was extremely sturdy and could easily reflect damage from ordinary monsters.
Over time, he had gotten used to it. But now there were cracks, and he could feel them. With wind constantly protecting him, how could this happen?
"My control over Ice Element feels a bit off?" He quickly realized that the Ice Element that usually obeyed his will was faintly resisting him.
But that was not a problem. Disobedient children just needed a beating. Belial kept a blank expression and slammed his will down hard.
If Ice Element would not listen, he would beat it until it did. After several heavy mental strikes, Ice Element seemed to remember who was in charge and returned to obedience. "Alright, it is fine again. Was the signal bad just now?"
He recalled the feeling carefully. For a brief moment, Ice Element had felt like it was answering some kind of call. "That is strange."
After thinking about it, he beat his wings again, blasting out a wave of air and increasing his speed. It did not take long. After flying a few dozen li, he saw dust and smoke rising from the land below.
It was clearly monsters. On the ground, a dense tide of beasts surged forward, strong and weak mixed together like waves, charging fearlessly toward a towering city wall. The sky was also filled with flying monsters, including huge serpents with storm-wrapped bodies that slammed through giant ballista bolts and crashed onto the walls.
A massive elephant covered in thick ice armor ignored huge fireballs smashing into its body. It crushed weaker monsters under its feet and then rammed the city wall with all its strength. Enormous white bears roared, breathing out frost that spread clusters of ice toward the walls, letting agile wolves leap up, only to be chopped into pieces by blades falling from all sides.
Scenes like this happened constantly. All kinds of magic and sword energy exploded among the monsters, turning the battlefield into a sea of blood. The monsters seemed completely mad, ignoring fireballs that burned everything to charcoal, crawling forward even with bellies pierced by stone spikes or legs cut off by wind blades.
Only when freezing novas fell and turned them into ice statues did they finally stop. Even then, their eyes still rolled inside the ice.
Belial saw humans, far more than he had ever seen combined before. Armored warriors and staff-wielding mages stood with blazing auras, unleashing a flood of colorful effects that poured down on the monster tide like artillery. Soldiers in leather and iron armor struggled to load massive bolts into ballistae, and when fired, the bolts carved bloody paths through the beasts.
Great cannons engraved with glowing patterns roared with fire. The overall scene looked like the swords-and-magic Otherworld he knew, with warriors and mages fighting side by side.
"But wait, this is a beast tide attacking a city? Why would they do that?" He was talking about the monsters. Charging a city so recklessly made no sense, and there was nothing to gain.
"Did the city block their migration route?" Belial scratched his head.
That did not seem likely. Even herds like bison would not be stupid enough to charge a wall dozens of meters high, since going around would be faster. Monsters were smarter than ordinary beasts, so they would not do something this suicidal just to migrate.
Besides, the state of the monster tide below clearly felt wrong. Something had to be causing this. Belial could not sense anything specific, but he hesitated about whether to step in.
He could see that the human defenders were about to collapse and were being pushed back from the walls. The monsters used ice and earth magic to build huge ladders up to the walls and swarmed forward. Humans could only focus fire on those points and a few stronger monsters, but the gap in strength and numbers was too large.