This attack carried more than physical momentum, enough in theory to pierce space and time itself. It struck Belial squarely in the chest, exploding into a blockbuster of sparks and blasting a huge circular void through the landscape behind him. Yet despite the ear-grating friction, the attack failed to break his defense.
"My turn," Belial said. His gravity-laced Space Claw snapped shut around the lightning-charged horn of Megalon. Bright Gold Rank-colored currents surged out and wrapped around his body.
The lightning only danced across his surface, leaving him slightly numb at most. At close range, he continued charging power while Megalon's drills struck him several more times. They barely scratched him, and a direct hit from Fusion Reaction Beam burned away a shoulder.
With a shrill cry and the sound of something being Rend apart, the struggle ended. After tearing off the horn, Belial delivered a straight kick that sent Megalon flying into a mountain. It did not collapse immediately, but staggered back to its feet.
As expected, its arms merged into an even larger drill, fully detaching from its armor, and a second pair of wings unfolded. The drill spun violently, drawing in vast unknown power, while the phantasmal outlines of Divine Kingdom wavered and were pulled in like a vortex. This was its final gamble.
The acceleration was so fast that even gravity failed to catch it. The spiraling drill slammed into Belial's chest and sent him flying back. The attack continued relentlessly, an endless spiral that would not stop until death.
Belial was not idle. His claw, wrapped in Crystal, clamped down on the spinning drill. While still being pushed backward through the air, he raised his other glowing arm and calmly began charging.
A massive electromagnetic ring formed and contracted. A brilliant white flash swept across, nearly wiping away the remaining phantasmal surface of Divine Kingdom and carving off a chunk of it entirely. Belial shook his head, walked out of the ruins, and tossed aside the upper half of Megalon's corpse.
After taking Divine Severing Thunder at point-blank range, Megalon was finally finished. Still, Belial frowned as he wrapped the remains in the surrounding Crystal ecology to digest them. Something was wrong.
"Why do you not have a soul either?" he muttered. One coincidence might explain Baragon, but this made two. And the souls of the earlier minor targets were also gone without a trace.
Frowning deeply, Belial felt something was seriously off. He moved together with the Space Clone toward the final battlefield, where the Rodan Clone was fighting Super-Xianglong.
That battle was the most one-sided of all. Due to Authority suppression, the flames dominated completely, burning away swarms of insects with just a spark. Even Super-Xianglong could not withstand the overwhelming inferno.
The fire kept growing hotter, until the Rodan Clone was wreathed in near-black flames and almost finished the enemy. Yet something strange happened. After taking enough damage, Super-Xianglong suddenly broke apart, condensed into a spherical mass, and stopped moving.
At first, this did not seem like a problem. Not moving did not mean it would not keep getting attacked, and being packed together should have made it easier to burn everything away at once. That was the plan.
But as the flames continued, they became less effective past a certain point. Eventually, they could no longer burn it down any further. Something abnormal had occurred.
Belial arrived with two other Clone and saw a giant burning fireball. It was clearly still burning, yet its size did not shrink at all. His nose twitched, and his eyes widened.
He smelled something. "The souls of those few fish, and the souls of those three big ones, they seem to be right in front of me. No, this reaction feels a bit wrong."
Belial seemed to find the source of the dozen Crimson Soul he had lost earlier. Those souls, for some unknown reason, had all gathered onto this thing, into the huge burning mass that was Super-Xianglong. Yet there was no expected fusion reaction, and the dozen souls still maintained a kind of separate relationship, which left him unable to figure it out.
"Whatever, I do not care what kind of fusion you are planning. I can just turn you into a Shard at this step first, right?" He was always the type to act instead of talking, and he raised his hand to give it a Plasma Cutter to cut it open and see what was inside. At that moment, Belial sensed something strange.
The Rodan Clone seemed to have a vague reaction. That feeling made Belial search his mind for a moment. Ah, right, it was trembling.
"Wait, what are you afraid of? It is already flying right at a Dragon Rider face, how could you still lose?" Belial realized that it was not the Rodan Clone itself trembling. It was the power left behind by the part of Rodan he had spat out earlier that was trembling.
It was like an insect facing a bird, or a jackal facing a tiger, a feeling of meeting a natural enemy. That sense of being absolutely ended, beyond what the word death could cover, was shaking the concept called Authority of Decay from its foundation.
"Hoo…" A faint breathing sound came through, and strands of pale purple light lit up deep within the black sphere. Then two bright points appeared, and the dozen souls gathered inside were all trembling.
"Roar!" "Wail!"
That faint sound instantly woke several ancient Crimson God sleeping in Abyss. They all awakened without hesitation and let out threatening roars. Their eyes were filled with disbelief and fear they could not hide, and in their hearts they were cursing the fools who had created that thing, while also searching everything around them for any of their own kind.
They were already preparing for a group battle, or preparing to run. Within a cocoon somewhere inside a massive vortex formed from endless Dark Power mixed with resentful souls, an existence vaguely sensed something.
It stirred its body, huge crimson eyes opening in the darkness, and looked toward a certain place in Void. After roughly recognizing what it was, shock flashed through its eyes. It even stretched out its claws and spread its wings, ready to break the cocoon early.
Even though it had not yet reclaimed its light, if it did not do this, then itself, everyone else, and even the world would be ended. The Abyss world and the Crimson God would also face that endlessly delayed end. However, after sensing that the other side was not in a complete state and had not reached that former scale, it slowly closed its eyes and continued to sleep.
"This feeling is bad…" Ham, who was working hard as a coder, suddenly changed expression.
Even though he felt nothing directly, the trembling of his soul and body, and the fear rising from his heart, could not be wrong. It could only be that thing. "So this is fear? That is really new, haha…"
Beside him, Bella clenched her hand. Confusion flashed through her eyes, and she laughed twice, but cold sweat was running down from her temples, showing this was not a good feeling. "What happened? Why am I feeling this emotion? Ham, you would not know what it is, right?"
Seeing Ham's reaction, Bella asked curiously. His fearful gaze made her expression change slightly, while Ham opened his mouth for a moment and then did not know what to say. Run? There seemed to be nowhere to run.
"…Anyway, the only thing we can do next might be Prayer." "…Huh? Prayer? Why? To who?"
"Belial. This scale is still not as big as back then, but if it keeps expanding, we are done for too. So we can only place our hope on him, hoping that Belial can win." "At worst, as long as he can keep it tied down until those Crimson God cannot hold back and split themselves with Rend, it will be fine. Otherwise, running anywhere is useless."
"What nonsense are you even talking about? Can you speak clearly? I hate riddles!" Not just them, but all existences in Abyss, along with Prime World, every single soul felt fear at the same moment.
Even inorganic matter and lifeless substances felt fear as well. Even elements like Laws and other vague concepts were afraid. Everything that relied on existence was afraid, just like ordinary life fears death, existence itself feared annihilation.
That was a concept of Authority that should not exist and could not be held by any crimson body. End.
Belial did not feel that emotion, but he knew something big was coming. He subconsciously recalled the Rodan Clone, but before it fully returned, it collapsed and was blown apart, passively returning into his body. Feeling the power come back, his expression turned serious.
He directly recalled the other two Clone and stared at the massive black mass. "Who is it?"
There was another expert. The tables had turned, and Belial looked again at the fireball, not expecting this to happen to him. What kind of expert was this, able to instantly turn a Rodan Clone into a Shard?
A purple Rift flashed, and in the next instant all flames were extinguished. Void returned to darkness. A faint roar sounded, and all remaining power, whether decay authority or insect swarm corpses, vanished completely.