It sounded like a nuclear reactor starting up. As the steam thinned, Phil could vaguely see blue-white lights flickering within it. The lights grew brighter and spread, outlining the shape of a tail.
"This looks kind of like…"
The scene felt eerily familiar to Fei'er Li, and she swallowed hard. Another tremor shook the ground. A tall, shattered body made entirely of ice was suddenly hurled high into the air from the mist.
"Fire of Decay…?"
She could not forget that overwhelming presence, and its fate now mirrored what she had seen in the mental space. Then a massive, black shape rose from below the cliff, and Fei'er Li nearly fell over in shock.
The true form revealed a huge, ferocious head and neck, with crystal-like dorsal spines along its back. One by one, they lit up with blue-white light in time with the hum. Great Dragon opened its mouth, light glowing within, and the sight became impossible to ignore.
"This has to be a coincidence… this is Otherworld… right?"
Fei'er Li swallowed again. A pillar of blue-white light erupted skyward, striking the airborne remains of Fire of Decay. The body exploded in midair, leaving not even scraps behind.
As the light slowly faded, Fei'er Li stood frozen. Then she dropped heavily to the ground, sitting there in a daze.
After firing that last Spiral Heat Ray and making sure nothing was left behind, Belial nodded in relief. "Sure enough, this dump called Otherworld was never going to be easy. Even random monsters popping out of nowhere can fight me this hard." Thinking back on the battle, he still felt a faint chill of fear. Loading the Diablo template did not just boost raw numbers. The unique Wraith Constitution was what gave him the right to fight that thing on equal footing.
Without it, relying on normal methods would have been exhausting and endlessly troublesome. Fighting while devouring the enemy also helped him vaguely understand why it was so hard to kill. It seemed to involve some kind of soul level trick that he still could not fully grasp. Even setting that aside, the monster bird itself was the strongest opponent he had ever faced. Most enemies were finished the moment they stood up, and this was the first one that could trade blows with him for so long.
Belial checked his condition after the fight. Several scales on his body had been scorched by flames, causing forced damage, but the g-cells were already repairing them at high speed. With Wraith Constitution layered on top, the recovery rate was climbing even faster. As for that strange Ice Crystal pulled out during the final move, it was both the enemy's true core and the mission target.
Once the mission target was obtained, the task was considered complete. He could not even tell where the reward went, possibly because it was too small or had already flown off somewhere. After swallowing the power inside the Ice Crystal, the sheer amount almost made Belial choke. It was packed with dense Magic and elemental energy, and the taste strangely reminded him of a strawberry flavored version of the fragments he had eaten not long ago. There was also something inside that was a major tonic for Wraith Constitution. He could not name it, but he was certain it was beneficial.
"Not bad. After eating this, I just need to find a place to sleep, and I can grow another round," he said. As for whether to keep lying low after waking up or go back to rampaging across the world as planned, he hesitated a little. Wraith Constitution was basically unbeatable against physical reality and made him very hard to kill. Still, he had just met an enemy that also involved the soul level.
That meant this layer of revival was not guaranteed to be flawless. "Well, whatever. Getting stronger is never wrong. By the way, what kind of new template did that mission give me?" "Another Godzilla or what?" Belial had not forgotten why he picked a fight with that bird in the first place. It was all for the mission.
The explanation from the System was incomplete, showing only one word. Thousand? Millennium maybe. It sounded decent enough, but that thing was over a hundred meters long and still fairly light. It was not even as heavy as a fifty meter class God of Destruction. And the beam color was uniquely different.
He also remembered that he once could not tell the difference between this thing and a war dragon, thinking they were the same individual. "Panel analysis in progress. 'Great Beast total… thousand…'" "Forget it. I'll find out sooner or later… huh?" Belial suddenly swung his head and scanned his surroundings.
There was a familiar presence. Energy Field showed no abnormalities. Yet under the enhancement of Wraith Constitution, he could sense something he never could before. A vast and vaguely familiar power was drawing closer. Closer.
"A dragon? The Black Dragon moved!" From afar, seeing the massive Great Dragon suddenly shaking its head, Icelis hurried back into the carriage in fright. Watching her former body get crushed and eaten right in front of her had already terrified her, and now it was even worse. Revenge or recovering fragments was no longer an option. The fragments could not be touched and had to be used to seal the Evil God outside the world. As Fei'er Li had said before, in order to come out, Icelis had made a holy severing from her former body.
Her level cap still existed, but she had to train again from scratch. If that dragon was still hungry, the outcome was unthinkable. "I think you actually don't need to be that scared, though I'm not completely sure myself," Fei'er Li said. She also looked mentally shaken, with a huge question mark forming in her mind. When they got back, she would have to ask that mage who specialized in dragon lore.
There was also a strange sense of unreality. After countless hardships and risking their lives, facing an enemy they could barely resist and thinking all hope was lost, they found out the solution was simply waiting for a wild monster king to pass by. "So maybe doing nothing was the best choice?" Fei'er Li subconsciously asked herself. When she came back to her senses, the faint inner voice was already gone. The holy relic amulet meant to be used as a one time bomb was not retrieved, likely left behind in the valley.
Trying to distract herself, Icelis looked at Vann. She noticed him frowning again and spoke up. "Vann, what are you thinking now? Everything's solved. Can't you be happy about going back?" "…Solved?" The instincts of a Warrior and a vague sixth sense made Vann feel that something was still wrong, even after leaving the battle. Hearing those words, he suddenly slapped his palm. "Wait. It's not solved yet."
"Not solved?" Everyone's attention snapped to him. Icelis even wanted to check his forehead to see if he had gotten a fever from the cold earlier. Vann spoke again, his tone serious. "We need to go back there now, if it's not too late." "There's someone with almost no presence that we all forgot about… huh?"
He looked up at the sky and clearly showed surprise. When the others followed his gaze, they wore the same expression. "What is that?" In the distant Canyon, a bewitching black flower seemed to bloom in midair. It floated without roots and spread eight long, massive petals. It faintly merged with the large ritual Magic Array that had not yet been destroyed, and the effect of interfering with reality activated again. A sense of ill omen crawled up everyone's spine.
Fei'er Li's pupils widened slightly. Those were not petals at all. They were symbols embedded into the Magic Array, the common blasphemous mark of the Abyss Church. It was a gigantic eight pointed star. "Roar…" That familiar roar that pierced both reality and the will world echoed faintly in their minds.
Blood streamed from the sky. From the horrifying scar, a flaming claw suddenly climbed out. Fire of Decay held a very special position among the many Evil God of the Abyss Church. That special status was not about strength, but about literal position. If the world were divided into inside and outside, one side being the present world, the Evil God were not all necessarily outside. Some were inside, sealed or lost somewhere.
For those outside to cross the boundary, they needed massive rituals to blur the line and use it as an anchor. Only then could they project will and power, or even descend in person. Fire of Decay was different. Its position was stuck in between. That in between layer, a kind of gap between worlds, became its prison after some unknown accident. Perhaps the Northlands once held a similar ritual to summon Fire of Decay, but something went wrong and it could not return.
The only theoretical exit was blocked long ago when Icelis split herself to act as a node and sealed the gap. Too much time had passed since then. Trapped in a place without time, and shaped by its own concept, it decayed into something like a dying sun. It was at its weakest, and once a chance to escape appeared, it would never let go. That was why Kwenfield could squander so much Blessed Power while running around to break the seal. It paid with time to set up a near perfect trap.