Until that perfect plan met an equally perfect dragon. And then it was smashed to pieces. The planned monster sacrifices were all eaten, but because Icelis's former mental fragment struggled free, a new plan formed. The idea was to pour out power, seize the opponent's Laws, and lure in the Great Dragon so both sides would be crippled. Then it could take the Laws and a fine vessel to unseal itself.
That dragon crushed nearly everyone involved, including it, and destroyed the last hope. Evil God were rarely rational beings to begin with. Fire of Decay was already mad, and a mad being facing true death had no reason to count the cost. In the end, after sacrificing more victims, the imprisoned Fire of Decay began burning countless innocent souls.
It forcibly controlled a being called Salva. Before he was reduced to ashes, it used him to set up a ritual that allowed it to act. "Roar!" In the empty void, it released a final, shrill howl that spread as a concept rather than sound. Like a dying star, it burned its last light. A decaying divine realm unfolded, wings flaring like solar prominences, and a blood red high level soul tore at the world's outer wall.
This was a last flare, brilliant and destructive, as its essence burned away. The flaming claw of decay tore open a tiny gap, revealing what it desperately sought to destroy. Pouring rage inside would not achieve much, but dragging a few remembered ants into the divine realm was easy. Success or failure no longer mattered to it.
The claw reached out without hesitation. In the sky, the original RendRift twisted into a vortex of black red flames like a monstrous maw. Everything pulled inside was consumed, and the fire even flowed across the ground. "Run!" "Don't stop!"
Icelis and the others fled with all their strength. They were moving forward, yet the space behind them felt burned away, and the distance to the Rend gap kept shrinking. "That guy I froze stupid has gone completely insane. He really wants to drag others down with him," Icelis said. She forced herself to draw on her limited Laws, raising clusters of ice to push back the black red flames. Even at full effort, they could not truly widen the distance.
She knew the Evil God had gone mad and wanted to drag these plan wrecking ants to hell. She understood that level of power better than anyone present, and its final frenzy would be worse than expected. They could not escape. Neither the vehicle carrying Fei'er Li nor Vann could outrun a dying Evil God's revenge. This was only an outburst, though.
Should they gamble? Gamble that the Evil God would run out of power, or that they could hold on until then? Or something else.
Icelis glanced at Fei'er Li and quietly slowed down. The latter reacted instantly, turning around and catching the child in the act. "Don't tell me you're planning to do that kind of thing again." "I did it when I was whole. At this scale, it's just right for me now." "I know better than anyone that running is useless."
Before Fei'er Li could respond, Icelis's eyes sharpened. She thrust both hands forward, releasing a massive wave of ice that shoved everyone far away. Her own body flew backward instead. The last words she said were still clear. "I just lied to you once. Was that really worth this kind of payback?"
Fei'er Li struggled to open the blank book in her arms, flipping to the page with the contract mark, hesitating. "After sealing it, I'll summon you back. You said it yourself, but is that really still possible?" When she looked back, Icelis was already gone from sight.
Then another figure caught her attention. The wing spread Great Dragon shot into the sky, weaving through the flames. It was not being pulled in. It flew there on its own. "…What is he trying to do?"
Icelis had already reached the Rend gap. She used all remaining Laws to resist the erosion of Fire of Decay and slowly froze the gap. Her body began collapsing piece by piece, its elemental makeup being extracted to fill the freezing seal. Her awareness blurred, and she acted on impulse, not knowing if it would work. Under that desperate effort, the Rend gap really did start to freeze.
Just as she thought this might be enough, there was a loud crash. Icelis froze in shock. That nightmare black Great Dragon came out of nowhere and smashed through the ice she had built with such effort. It then dove straight into the Rend gap leading beyond the world.
"Huh?" Belial was about to rush into that clearly dangerous gap when a mass of ice suddenly appeared on his planned path. He smashed through it with his head instead. "How is there a little girl here?" Catching something from the corner of his eye, he paused and poked his head back out of the Rend gap. "What are you trying to do?"
Icelis stared in terror as the Great Dragon grabbed her in its grasp. It showed a vicious grin, and the world around her began to spin.
Diablo had said this before. This Godzilla was born from strange factors and was, at its core, a very metaphysical kind of Godzilla. After loading this template, Belial still did not fully grasp his own abilities, and his understanding of souls was limited to knowing they existed and that he could interfere with them a little. But now, Belial could see them.
Tens of thousands of broken souls drifted around him like a river, spiraling upward in a vast ring and gathering from all directions. The sight was unexpectedly grand. At first glance, Belial instinctively thought, this is what a soul looks like.
Driven by curiosity, Belial casually grabbed one. These things did not show the face of their former the Lord like ghost stories described, but instead felt soft and fluffy, though that description did not quite match the feeling either. From the outside, a soul could only be described as a clump, gray and hazy, with a small point of light at its center.
The light in the middle was the essence. The gray haze around it was memory. This certainty appeared in Belial's mind almost automatically, perhaps a hidden passive talent of the God of Destruction, since that being itself was made of such things.
There was also something even stranger. "And this thing can be eaten?" He turned the soft soul in his hand, his instinct clearly telling him so.
Belial tossed one into his mouth to try it. For his size, it was so small it barely counted, vanishing almost the moment it touched his tongue, leaving only a tiny spark of light drifting out. The forgotten memories and lingering resentment became nourishment, turning into imperceptible droplets that merged into the vast sea within him.
"It can be eaten, and it's useful." After confirming this, Belial looked at the nearby soul torrent and his eyes lit up, opening his mouth and swallowing like a whale taking in water. Dense points of light seeped out through his flesh as the gray outer layers, including memories, were fully consumed, while Wraith Constitution automatically rejected the soul essences themselves, refusing to be polluted by other selves.
Belial was Belial. Once he realized these things were edible, beneficial, and plentiful, he stopped holding back. With so many souls around, it did not look like anyone else wanted them anyway.
"Woohoo!" "I'm eating, eating, eating!" Belial feasted within the soul torrent filling the valley, completely unaware of the black blood-flesh flower blooming above like an eight-pointed star.
The feeding of the Great Dragon continued until a familiar black-red flame poured down from the torn Rift above and burned a small cluster of souls and essence to nothing right in front of him. "Hmm?" Great Dragon looked up, sensing that familiar presence again, both the flame and that old stench.
"Do you villains all get a once-in-a-lifetime teleport or something? How do you keep popping out somewhere else every time you die?" "Or are you just fodder in a team, getting blown up in human form and then coming back bigger?" Belial felt speechless.
The Rift in the sky burned and expanded using souls as fuel, while the Fire of Decay beyond the world poured out its fury without restraint. As the one who had beaten it senseless more than once, the Great Dragon was naturally the top target. Belial also felt a pulling force from the opening, along with the space around him being rapidly burned away.
The Rift was not moving downward. Instead, the distance between them kept shrinking as the space in between was erased, and for some reason, the spreading Gravity Tornado could sense the missing space. "It really is coming for me, and…" Belial felt anger rise as the huge supply of souls he could have eaten was burned away in one sweep.
"You interrupted my meal!" Worse still, when the black-red flames touched Belial, they clung to him like parasites, desperately trying to burrow inward and lock onto him like bombardment markers. Columns of flame sprayed down from the sky with naked malice, but Belial dodged them easily.