Along with it would go thousands of human Warrior puppets, tens of thousands of monsters, and hundreds of thousands of human civilians inside the city who had also become puppets. A natural disaster descended without warning. At the dragon's command, the unrestrained icy vortex showed its fangs, opening its maw and swallowing tens of thousands of lives in one bite.
Still unsatisfied, it chewed carefully with teeth of ice, grinding the flesh of blank-faced puppets into pulp. A flip of its icy wind tongue crushed everything completely and dragged it down its throat. Some tougher fragments resisted briefly, but under deliberate control, even those puppets acting as hidden nodes could do no more than delay their frozen deaths.
There was almost no resistance. Cold killing intent carried on the wind severed the hidden connecting threads, and the mental links were cut before the bodies even broke apart. The shockwaves that spread into the city flipped rows of houses into the air, and the far more fragile civilian puppets collapsed like toy blocks, falling outward in a domino pattern.
In Belial's vision, countless small red dots were wiped out in a single strike. Within the attack range, however, one larger red dot still remained. "That's it, or are you trying to lure me in?" he muttered.
Even the central giant red dot had been hit by the aftermath, yet it showed no reaction, as if inviting him closer. So many red dots had been erased, and the other side did nothing at all. It could not be that they were scared senseless.
Since the enemy did not counterattack, that was no reason for Belial to stop. There was another large red dot beneath the city wall, so he would kill that one first. The giant dragon dove.
Blade-like wing tips tore through the air, and the lightning clouds wrapped around his body were forced apart by the acceleration, bursting outward with the sonic boom into a massive white ring. The clouds were blown away, revealing the enormous dragon, and wrapped in a tighter flowing air sheath, Belial's speed increased even further.
By weakening his own weight through heavy ion control and using gravitational thrust, his speed faintly surpassed three times the speed of sound, drawing a sonic ring through the sky. A body this massive flying at three Mach was a shocking sight. If he skimmed the ground in his current state, the result would be no different from Rodan.
Belial's target was the red dot hidden inside the city wall. As he reached the endpoint, he leaned back and drove forward with both claws. Even weakened, his body still weighed close to ten thousand tons, and combined with near three-Mach inertia, he smashed into the towering wall like a cannon shell.
With a deafening roar, the wall of solid stone, steel framework, and cold-forged reinforcement, nearly ten meters thick, exploded without the slightest exaggeration. Strange and miserable wails echoed from within. The red dot target was a monster strengthened by Salva using Blessed Power, and it truly was powerful.
Just this one buried in the wall had been specially modified to deal with the dragon reaching the wall. Its strength had reached Gold Rank, and it looked like a scale-covered octopus, with a soft yet tough body that could absorb massive impact. Now it was reduced to a miserable heap of ruined flesh, scales shattered, its body marked with blockbuster Rend wounds, Minced Meat falling away as blood sprayed wildly.
Even with the wall as a first line of defense and its modified body absorbing force, the monster had nearly been crushed by the transmitted impact. It could only let out a weak howl. Scaled claws tore through the surrounding broken stone like tofu, and the claws showed no mercy as they ripped into flesh, dragging its huge body out of the wall's ruins.
Its still mostly intact eyes barely caught sight of the massive figure pulling it free. In that instant, overwhelming mental pressure awakened fear it had thought removed from its body long ago. The spiritual link to the Lord was already severed.
Then the monster, designed from the start to grapple the dragon in close combat and restrain it with its body, felt the giant claws gripping its flesh pull slowly apart. Skin tore first, then muscle, bone, and finally organs, as its body was slowly Rend open. With a ripping sound, a rain of blockbuster, foul-smelling blood splashed onto the ground.
Belial casually tossed the two chunks of ruined meat aside. "That's one dealt with," he said. His massive, vicious head turned toward the ancient castle standing in the center of the city.
That was where the largest red dot was. If the enemy could not even handle a basic greeting like this, then they could die in peace. Belial's gaze was cold.
At that moment, more tricks followed. Under Energy Field, Belial sensed a flow of Magic rapidly spreading. Because the central red dot was connected to countless threads, he could not intercept them all at once. In his perception, the Magic flowed through node after node, quickly linking together into a massive Magic Array.
The range was large, and the sky-covering visual effects were flashy enough. Belial soon understood what this Magic Array did. Rings of light wrapped around his body, beams rose like a cage, and a heavy pressure descended, forming an invisible barrier.
Within this area, his connection to external Magic and elements was cut off. Salva had noticed long ago that the dragon's breath not only came from itself but also caused surrounding elements to riot. The Prison of Aerlude spell included the effect of blocking elements, meant to suppress the extremely troublesome ice law power.
The spell itself could also create pressure to crush the dragon, and thanks to blood sacrifice, its power was further enhanced. In Salva's plan, even if the dragon was not directly crushed, it would be restrained, and then his carefully prepared creations would swarm in without honor. He believed he had cut off both wings of the dragon, its Magic and its brute force, and still had more preparations in reserve.
He had even considered the possibility that this spell might be broken by some strange Magic, and had backups for that as well. Unfortunately, that kind of thing might work on a dragon. It did not work on a monster.
"Just this little pressure," Belial said calmly. He raised a hand without the slightest effect on his movements, looking at the rings around him. Energy Field activated, and his hand lit up with the exploding Rend glow of Space Claw.
Under Energy Field, Belial was extremely sensitive to energy. This so-called complex spell structure and thick Magic barrier were no different from being naked to him. There were many ways to break it, or he could simply ignore it entirely. This also confirmed that it really was a trap aimed at him.
Since the other side was so hospitable, he would respond in kind. He easily sensed the structure of the Magic and found a relatively weak point, still thick, but only in comparison. "Still a bit lacking," he said.
The glowing claw slammed forward. Lightning flashed as blazing pale energy spread outward, and the enormous Magic Array in the sky filled with dense Rend cracks, as if the sky itself had been shattered. The surrounding Magic Array collapsed, taking on blockbuster shattered-glass patterns in an instant as the barrier was smashed by terrifying force.
The surging, destructive energy spread to every node, following spell lines and marks. In node chambers across the city, flesh-made casting organs exploded, reduced to char by extreme heat. Fires erupted everywhere in the city, with continuous blasts like firecrackers.
"How is that possible!" In the castle, a mass of searing energy surged back through the controlled Magic Array and exploded right in front of Salva's shocked face. The ancient castle blew apart from the inside out, bricks and stone flying, its upper structure collapsing and even showing signs of melting, as if struck directly by an aerial bomb.
But clearly, things were far from over. "If you die just like that, it would be too easy for you," Belial said as he glanced at the red dots on the map.
Movement erupted throughout the city, as huge tentacles and abnormal limbs stretched out from different places. Most notably, several red dots near the central castle where Salva was located began to gather together. On the map, they gradually merged with the largest red dot.
A thunderous roar rang out as another section of the city wall collapsed, and a massive giant snake forced its way through. Its body was twisted and deformed, each scale shaped like a serrated blade, with four arms and two heads, one red and one blue. The dozens-of-meters-long body writhed across the ground, crushing houses and human puppets with ease.
As the ground shook, a giant bear clad in thick chitin armor tore the earth apart with Rend and climbed out. Insect-like limbs grew from its sides, and an eerie cicada-like sound came from its throat. At the same time, a winged, two-headed Chimera with a lion's body, snake tail, mismatched limbs, and eagle heads charged in from the snowy plains outside the city, roaring toward the sky.