The moment that thought arose, the herd on the ground suddenly realized that their limbs were no longer listening to them. "Uuuugh!" One after another, their bodies collapsed as their legs, already shaved down into snow by freezing winds without their awareness, could no longer support their weight. The massive bodies slammed into the ground and then crumbled like fragile sand, the entire process taking less than five seconds, turning each giant elephant into a pile of powder before they even understood what had happened.
A cold wind swept past, and the food Belial had been about to eat was blown away. "…" He paused. "…Did I do that?"
When he felt a small stream of Magic gather toward him like it had during previous slaughters, Belial finally confirmed that it really was his doing. He had only thought about it. What he did not know was that after he had swallowed some of those fragments earlier, his grasp of Laws had been rising on its own without him paying attention, and with the environmental boost of the icy surroundings and his lack of control after waking, he had unconsciously moved just a little power.
The result was the terrible outcome of having no meal to eat. "Looks like I ate too much of those special products before. They really are good stuff." He also noticed that his proficiency with ice-related Rend had increased a lot, to the point where he could use them without drawing a Magic Array at all.
Although he did not fully understand what had happened, it was still a good thing overall, so Belial did not dwell on missing a meal. He found that the range and precision of ice elements he could control with just his will had both increased, which was very satisfying. He even wondered if, with this level of power back then, he might have been able to suppress the activation of Burning Mode.
Flying through the sky, he used his newly awakened soul perception to sweep the surrounding area, searching for prey. After circling for a few more minutes, he made a decision. "Time to go. It is time to change maps."
Belial turned and flew toward lower latitudes, in a different direction from where he had come. The reason was simple, since the elephant herd he had just seen was already one of the larger monster groups in the area. There were basically none left beyond that, which meant he had not slept that many years, and the ecosystem had not recovered enough for him to keep clearing the map like before.
Whether for continued growth or just for new entertainment, it was time to leave, as this small place could no longer withstand the trouble of a Great Beast. After all, killing a single Rodan had required him to activate Burning Mode, and that level of gap raised his desire for power a bit more. "By the way, if Otherworld has Rodan, will I run into other old acquaintances too?"
At the forested border of the Pariten Empire, a massive floating island suddenly appeared in the sky, with space around it cracking like shattered mirrors under Rend, revealing countless Crack. With a deep rumble, the underside of the island crushed towering ancient trees, and with layers of Magic Array forming support beneath it, the island barely hovered in the air.
Above the island, among castles and refined buildings, beneath a splendid and ancient tower, a door that had not been opened in a long time slowly swung open. Floating out was a petite girl with gray, seaweed-like long hair that reached past her ankles, wearing a wide-brimmed witch hat and a dark purple robe embroidered with a silver full moon, with an eyepatch over one side of her face. Holding a Magic Staff in one hand, she breathed lightly and looked grimly at her damaged spatial barrier and the wide, charred empty area on one side of the island.
That area had once held many things, such as rare collections, valuable materials, and even scarce plant specimens. All of them were gone. Decades of a witch's collections, including priceless items and near-extinct samples, had vanished, and even her spatial barrier was left in this state. The damage this caused to a young witch was obvious.
Lilyth already preferred to stay at home because of her physical condition, but thinking about the sudden disaster from not long ago nearly made her snap her Magic Staff in anger. "At least I finally found a sufficient source of Magic. My luck is not bad, an undiscovered vein of Magic Crystal Ore."
With a light tap of her staff, her unusually strong perception of Magic and precise probing with Magic pierced through layers of soil and rock, revealing the energy within the slender ore vein below. Her expression finally improved, as she now had both a site to set up Magic Array for repairing her barrier and a steady source of Magic. "Mm… the priority is still to roughly fix the internal Magic balance first. A simple ritual site will do."
She sighed again, especially when she felt faint discomfort stirring in parts of her body. Ignoring the long-familiar pain, Lilyth returned to her mage tower to look for materials. She had prepared plenty of components for balancing internal Magic, stored in various places precisely to guard against situations like this.
"…Looks like I will have to go buy these alchemy parts again."
Outside the window stood a device like an armillary sphere, with a brass monocular telescope at its center, surrounded by shattered tracks and smoking components. Lilyth sighed helplessly once more. She never should have let that cursed curiosity drive her to chase a mysterious red light beyond the cracks of the world, one that carried a hint of divinity.
It was not some rare phenomenon or valuable object at all. It was a residual wave, a tiny fragment that had been split by Rend, heavily weakened, deflected, and dispersed, yet it still shattered her triple spatial barrier, countless defensive Magic Array, and erased half of her floating island with its extreme heat and destructive force. "I thought it was a remnant of that solar event from over ten years ago. If I had known it was this, I would never have touched it."
She was just a little curious. Curious about who had released something like that. The more Lilyth thought about it, the angrier she became, though she was fairly sure she would never meet the real the Lord behind it in her lifetime.
"It's a forest. The life density here is much higher than the snowfields from before."
Under the thunderclouds wrapped in lightning above High Heavens, a massive Black Dragon beat its wings and flew on. For such a simple reason as getting a proper meal, Belial had been flying for quite a long time, maybe several days, though it was hard to be sure while staying in the air. Only after the scenery below clearly changed did he slow down and drop his altitude to take a look.
Because his control and power over Ice Element had increased for no clear reason, his usual flight method felt awkward now. The imbalance in his spell output affected the surroundings, almost forming a moving miniature typhoon, so wherever he flew, violent thunderstorms followed. His control was improving little by little, and after some more time he should be able to restore the old balance.
When he left the snowfields earlier, he had accidentally dragged along a Blizzard that stretched for thousands of miles, at least in direct impact. As for the indirect effects, Belial did not bother to calculate them. This rebirth had clearly changed his body, such as wings that were broader, with a longer span, better elasticity, and flexibility that was almost like having extra hands.
With improved energy conduction, many aspects of his physical functions were still unclear, and his control was not fully stable yet. Given Belial's current size and the scale of his Magic, it was easy to create this kind of moving weather disaster. He lowered his head slightly, pushing his huge skull out of the clouds, and swept the terrain below with a single glance.
Below were many ancient trees tens of meters tall, though it was not a tropical rainforest. Strange ferns and vines clung to the trunks, while large birds and ape-like creatures moved through the dense canopy. With a sharp eye, he also spotted unusual plants shaped by the presence of Magic, each growing in its own strange way instead of following the same pattern.
Some plants glowed, some burned, some crawled forward on moving roots, and one kind floated in the air on gas sacs like a parasitic species attached to tall trunks. He even saw a passing monster step on a patch of grass, only for the grass to surge upward, reveal dense markings beneath, and lash the monster in the face repeatedly. Compared to the snowfields where Belial had stayed before, this place was far less barren.
Naturally, there was much more food here, but Belial did not plan to eat wildly like before. After his skeleton had been rebuilt, his body length jumped to over sixty meters once it recovered a bit, though he was slimmer than when he was at the fifty-meter level. If other parts of the body lacked nutrients, height alone meant nothing, and what Belial needed was to make up for what was missing.