Otherwise, one day he might get jumped by a group shouting about bonds and friendship, flashing back through memories before killing him without reason. After all, this was the Otherworld, where physics did not need to make sense. He remembered many dragon seniors being hunted down, with all kinds of strong individuals solo-killing them in highlight reels.
He had not met any real opponents so far, but in this icy, polar-like land, there were barely any people at all, so that was normal. Even with language barriers and no way to explain his behavior during the Beast Tide, many people must have seen him. Would he really get attacked for that.
Although he did want to kill the other side and take the signal, what if they could talk first. With that in mind, Belial raised a photon reflection barrier to make the other side stop. He even kindly left enough reaction time for them.
Time returned to the present. Belial watched as the other slammed into the barrier like a fly, looking like it hurt a lot. His first reaction was to look for cameras to prove that the other side had run into it themselves.
If that failed, there were still people in the city who might have seen it and could testify that this person hit the barrier on their own. But the other side did not stop there and began attacking wildly around him. Dense flame attacks fell like rain, and huge blazing skeletal claws tried to grab him.
Black Magic wrapped around jumping fire serpents, charred skulls spewing flames, and within the fire appeared twisted, hissing faces. Red-black flames surged, trying to extend their fangs toward the white dragon. But the photon reflection barrier stood firm like an unyielding wall, and the flames had no effect at all.
This was a barrier that could reflect even the tens of thousands of degrees of the Spiral Heat Ray from the Heisei Era g. Still, Belial no longer wanted to keep taking hits. Not only did these effects look suspicious, but he had already made his stance clear by only raising a barrier and enduring the attacks.
The other side did not look like a good person. The other side was not a good person. The other side had only one goal.
In Belial's pupils, the raging flames outside were reflected, burning there, but inside hid something colder than fire. Colder than the vacuum of space. The other side wanted to kill him.
He did expand for signals, but until now he had only killed monsters. Killing people directly still made him hesitate. He had once been human too, not some destined hero obsessed with survival of the fittest and ruthless slaughter.
He had completed compulsory education and still had a sense of morals. He had some hesitation toward his former kind. But now it was different, because the other side had already decided to kill him.
He did not want to be an evil dragon because he was afraid of death. Being afraid of death did not mean being easy to bully. He slowly opened his jaws full of sharp teeth.
"I was still holding back a little," he said. "But now, thank you for giving me a good enough reason."
The other side's attack paused for a moment, seized by an unexplained sense of dread. The monster had awakened. The god of destruction from the universe, the ultimate battle lifeform, cast its gaze slightly toward the insignificant ground.
Killing is an interaction that, aside from suicide, requires at least two individuals. When it begins, both sides are given the same right to kill. You want to kill me, so I want to kill you. That seems reasonable.
Here, Third Bomb was activated again. When the claws of the Black-robed Man struck directly against the Photon Reflection Barrier, the flames slammed hard into it and the fiery claw tips shattered on contact. As everyone knew, force always rebounds, so not only was the damage shallow, a bad cracking sound came from his fingers that made his face twist in disgust.
There was no surprise at all, his finger bones were broken. That kind of injury would heal quickly, but what shocked him far more was the solid barrier in front of him that had taken his full-force strike without the slightest issue. That attack had been infused with Blessed Power, and the heat it gave off naturally was enough to melt steel with ease, yet that was far from its only trait.
It also carried special properties that ignored armor, dealt true damage, and applied debuffs, every hit burning fiercely. Yet the opponent not only took it head-on, it did not even move. The raised dragon head lowered slightly, and the dragon's eyes showed open contempt, like an adult watching a child play around.
"So there really is such a powerful defensive Magic." He was a little surprised and wondered if it was Draconic Magic, but there had been no chanting at all. In that instant, countless possibilities ran through his mind.
Spell chanting was a necessary step for casting Magic. So-called chantless casting either meant an extremely deep understanding of Magic, or a weakened version that sacrificed part of its power. He could not be sure which it was.
What he could clearly feel was the other side's disdain, and he sneered at it inwardly. It was only one attack, yet the opponent dared to act so arrogant. A cold laugh rose in his chest.
"I refuse to believe it. Such a powerful defensive Magic must consume a lot. I will find your weak point." "Let this pride of yours become the fuel that burns you."
His figure vanished like a ghost, leaving only faint afterimages in the air, followed by a storm of Magic strikes. As someone bearing blessings, he could easily cast large numbers of mid-level Magic almost instantly without chanting, or compress long incantations into a few syllables to unleash higher-level Magic.
What followed was a firestorm that swept over the dragon's entire body. The spreading flames formed a massive fireball nearly a hundred meters wide above the city, as if a second sun had appeared in the sky. The heat was so intense that the city felt like summer, nothing like it had just endured a Blizzard.
On the city walls, Feltz, who was sitting and recovering, could not help but feel the heat and the overwhelming Magic, and looked up at the blazing sun in the sky. Among the other survivors, some were terrified while others did not care. After all, whether it was a dragon or something else, nothing could be dealt with anyway, so why bother worrying.
As for the Black-robed Man himself, he felt numb. At first he thought that no shell was unbreakable, and such a strong defensive Magic had to have a limit. Could the dragon really maintain a full three-hundred-sixty-degree defense without any gaps?
After fighting for a while, he realized that it truly could. Of course, if he was willing to pay a price, he might still break through the defense. But was it worth it?
"I refuse to believe it. I want to see how long you can hold out." He temporarily gave up on brute force and shifted to lurking for an opening, circling constantly as his figure faded within the surrounding flames.
The fire around them twisted into a vicious shape, like the jaws of a monstrous beast, teeth like blades. The heat formed a cage that trapped the dragon in the sky and continued to scorch it. Sure enough, for the first time since the battle began, the calm giant dragon moved and slowly raised a foreclaw.
The dragon's gaze locked directly onto him within the flames. "…!"
Suddenly, he felt a deep sense of dread. It was not pressure or mental force, but something more uncanny.
A colder sensation than anything before crawled up his spine, like an icy python sliding over his body. Its scales were like blades, leaving cold, bleeding marks, and it coiled around his neck, hissing in his ear as if to strangle him. Its eyes held no warmth at all.
Gasping, he felt as though he had returned to the past, when he had been so weak that even ants could kill him. It was also the moment when the great lord had first looked upon him.
"How is that possible… what was that feeling just now?" He saw the dragon open its mouth and immediately braced himself, wary of its breath. But what came was not freezing ice.
It was a storm wrapped in lightning. "Cough…!"
"Roar!!!!!!!!!!" The dragon's roar erupted like thunder, filled with violent destruction and killing intent, spreading outward with near-solid wind pressure that slammed straight into his body. The sound was like the herald of a flood, and the shockwaves scraped over his skin while his eardrums felt as if pierced by a blade.
Why could wind be this solid? It felt like a steel wall crashing into him, shaking his organs, and he almost spat blood. His prepared protective Magic flickered wildly as he was thrown away like torn fluff.
The massive fireball in the sky was shredded from the inside by the expanding storm, turning into white streams that spread in all directions. Below, buildings looked as if they were being crushed, covered in dense Rend marks.