The spire of a tall tower was sliced cleanly in the middle by the pressure ring and toppled over, while the remaining shockwaves tore the ground apart. People on the city walls were thrown into chaos, as if a muffled thunderclap had exploded right beside their ears.
As the one who took it at close range, he was in bad shape as well. His chest hurt, and the ringing in his ears would not fade.
"…What kind of wind-type Magic is this? Another chantless one?" He thought it was some unknown form of Draconic Magic, with no chanting and no Magic Array in sight, yet terrifyingly strong, breaking through his blockade in an instant.
What he did not know was that it barely counted as Magic, and it was not even an attack. It was simply releasing a burden. Belial did not fly just by flapping wings, but by manipulating heavy particles.
At the same time, he controlled wind around himself and used a low-power Energy Field to cover his body with an extremely compressed layer of wind pressure. It was shaped like an oval, streamlined for flight, and allowed him to move faster.
It could feel a bit restrictive, but he never cared, like wearing an extra layer of clothing. What he had done just now was simply release that compressed wind pressure. In simple terms, it was like letting loose the barrier wrapped around a club, turning it into a crushing hammer of wind.
This was the first time in his life that he had both a clear goal and the ability to act on it, to kill someone. He decided to be just a little more serious.
He set aside the Magic techniques he had been figuring out himself. Although he had studied and practiced a lot recently, it still was not enough in his eyes. He would keep it simple and tear the opponent apart.
The Black-robed Man, who had been struck by the storm in midair, had not been thrown very far. He watched the white dragon carefully, sensing that it was completely different now.
He saw the dragon charge straight at him and instinctively used flames. As long as there was a brief opening, he could seize it and turn the battle around.
"…Huh?" His eyes widened under the black robe as he saw the dragon show no pause at all, charging directly toward him with terrifying acceleration. In such a short burst, it had already produced a sonic boom.
He wanted to dodge, but a powerful force dragged him toward the dragon, as if he had been grabbed by a claw. The pressure made his bones creak and nearly crushed his organs, and in that brief moment, multiple bones throughout his body broke.
"What kind of Magic is this? I can't feel any Magic…" Spitting out blood, he immediately tried to use Blessed Power to escape, even if it meant paying a price.
But with both sides rushing toward each other, the distance was already too close. He could only raise a wall of fire in front of him, blazing white-hot, forcing it out while his internal Magic grew unstable, hoping to block or drive the dragon back.
It was useless. A claw that blotted out the sky and erased all escape routes treated the fire wall as if it were empty air. It shattered it as easily as breaking glass, flames scattering like fragments reflected in his eyes.
What he did not expect was that the dragon did not follow up with any Magic or close-range breath. Instead, it made an extremely simple motion.
Twist the waist. Swing the arm. Throw a punch.
There was no Magic at all, just a strike powered purely by the body's raw strength. Dragons were physically strong, but could such a plain, unadorned punch really kill him?
Even if the dragon was bigger and stronger than usual, that was the last thing he could think before his consciousness faded.
Belial's actions afterward were very simple. He used Gravity Tornado to pull the opponent in, then charged forward and threw a punch with a fist larger than the man's entire body.
He did not activate Space Claw or use any Magic. It was only pure physical force, but was it really that simple?
He did not use Spiral Heat Ray because the damage would overflow anyway, but why not use a flashier Magic instead? The answer lay in basic calculation.
A creature around forty meters long, weighing tens of thousands of tons, moving through the air at nearly Mach two, and throwing a punch. Its original form, the roughly hundred-meter-tall Heisei Era g, could casually toss monsters weighing tens or hundreds of thousands of tons, with base arm strength near a hundred million tons.
This creature surpassed even that, though not yet complete, so its strength could be compared to a weakened Heisei Era g. When that kind of power was fully unleashed on a normal human moving at nearly Mach two, the result spoke for itself.
When the opponent took this solid hundred-million-ton punch, the shockwave exploded. A dull, heavy sound rang out, and every living person in the city looked up at the sky.
In Belial's hand, only scattered bits of flesh remained. That was all that was left of the opponent. Yet the progress bar in his mind did not move at all.
"The progress bar did not move."
Belial glanced at the download progress in his mind, and it was still exactly the same. The enemy had been left with no room at all and was literally blown apart by a single punch. Muscles, bones, skin, the entire body had been crushed by power so absurd it ignored all reason, ground into paste so completely that even a grave could only hold empty clothes.
Before death, every escape route had been sealed by Gravity Tornado. He even sensed the enemy's body changing, yet it was still smashed into a lump of flesh by brute force. The biggest problem was that he felt none of the coins or rewards that should have dropped after the kill.
The enemy's Magic aura and the special power he needed vanished in an instant, as if they had teleported away directly from the System Map. It was not fast movement but true disappearance, while fragments of the corpse still remained. That contradiction made his eyes narrow.
"Did he escape with some method…"
He blew on his fist, and the bits of flesh clinging to it scattered with the wind. Spatial Teleportation? Or Clone? Maybe Astral Projection? Belial did not know.
With his cosmic-level perception, he could usually track exactly where every scrap of a shattered body went. He scanned the entire city and sensed nothing at all. Only for a brief moment had there been a strange feeling, familiar yet alien, and he could not explain it.
Thinking about it, it was not that surprising. This was the Otherworld, and it was normal for people here to have strange ways to save their lives, especially someone who looked that suspicious. Anyone useful for pushing a story forward could always crawl back up as long as there was a need.
Still, it made his teeth itch with anger. His gains were gone, and he had thought this would be a huge payoff, enough to unlock God of Destruction and gain a revival safeguard. That dream had collapsed on the spot.
"Looks like my methods are still too limited."
He had already memorized the enemy's scent. If that was really all the enemy could do, then the next time they met, unless the enemy cheated fate, it would still end with one punch. What worried him was that the enemy had been blown apart once and would surely prepare something nasty for the next encounter.
He did not expect anything honorable like the humans in Tokusatsu, mass producing absurd gear like Magnesium Ray Cannon or Absolute Zero Cannon. But if the enemy decided to hide, or shamelessly bring a whole cart of Mooks to swarm him, that could be annoying. After thinking it through, he relaxed again, since he was alone anyway and had nothing to protect but himself.
It was not only about the special power he needed from that enemy. The fact that they now wanted each other dead was reason enough for him to keep hunting. That mutual hostility was already firmly set.
"Beast Tide… they caused it, didn't they?"
That Magic aura was similar to the strange monsters he had torn apart before. He vaguely sensed something beyond the six elements, another kind of power entirely. He could not tell if it was an illusion.
The power he needed to unlock God of Destruction had only appeared on that man and those strong but oddly shaped monsters. Before, he thought it was just a trait of the Otherworld. Now it was clearly something unnatural, and it was a good thing he had not tried eating them.
They wore black robes, sent strange monsters to attack cities during the Beast Tide, and came out to stop him just as he was about to smash their plans. Put together, the conclusion was obvious. They were not good people, and killing them was justified.