But Augustus knew one thing. That light was not enough to cover the ever closing black sky.
Augustus's thinking was very clear. He knew his own strength could not defeat that Black Dragon, and even the earlier use of Clone had been enough to permanently strip away part of his domain, which was already terrifying. Facing the true body would be even worse.
Even Edward and Elfido, two bastards at roughly the same level as him, had turned timid like rats when they saw that Black Dragon, and both had been beaten into miserable states. Even as emperor, with unmatched confidence and ambition, Augustus understood better than anyone how hopeless absolute power suppression could be. It was pressure of pure mass and scale, ignoring form or technique entirely.
His own Authority was almost useless under that kind of suppression. The only way to win would be to collide head-on with equal mass and force, but past examples had already proven how that would end. Just recalling how his irreparably destroyed Territorial Domain had been forcibly torn apart was enough to make the conclusion obvious.
When the enemy entered the Empire, countless negative effects had been imposed on him, yet the other side showed no visible reaction at all. From that alone, Augustus understood that Authority and rules were meaningless tricks. Edward and the others were the best proof that there was no need for complicated plans.
The only chance of victory was to turn everything he had into pure power. At this moment, he would burn himself completely, using all people and things within the Empire as fuel. Hundreds of millions of lives would be squeezed for their final value, from soul to flesh, leaving nothing behind.
"Come, evil dragon!"
Augustus stepped out of the palace, his figure vast and imposing. Beyond the capital walls, the sounds of countless armies erupted as buried corpses, broken weapons, and armor piled together, forming gigantic walls that rose like Gundam towering into the sky. These were not ordinary fortifications.
Above them appeared dense ranks of heroic spirits, with bunkers rising like mountains and bows and cannons packed like rainfall. This was the concept of rejection embodied by Territorial Domain, reinforced by unimaginable amounts of Magic and stacked souls. The sheer volume of Magic far exceeded that of the previous Magic Fusion Bomb.
Each wall was the manifested will of heroes from countless wars, a massive epic of conflict in physical form. Any single one of them was enough to block an army, a supercharged version of the Wall of Sighs. This was the capital of the Empire, carrying over a thousand years of Augustus's accumulation.
To face Belial, he paid an enormous price and mobilized all power within the empire. This would be the first barrier to test his enemy, with roughly five hundred kilometers between them. It was practically within reach.
Outside the capital, stretching across military camps hundreds of kilometers wide, soldiers who had been dazed with loyalty to Augustus suddenly awakened. They felt a violent gust of wind and looked around in shock, realizing they did not recognize the place or the people nearby. The scene above them was even more unbelievable.
It should have been noon, yet there was no sunlight at all. As more soldiers woke, they stared upward in confusion. The sky had already turned into a strange black expanse.
A massive vortex of clouds expanded visibly, swallowing sky and land like a beast with endless hunger. It slowly advanced toward the golden city that had risen in the distance. The sight left many speechless.
"This is the limit of who I can save," Belial muttered. "Anyone inside the city is beyond help. Their souls were already sucked dry."
Using a small extension of his Energy Field and mental control, he restored the soldiers who had been brainwashed. That was all he could do, since even a doctor could not recreate life itself. He truly did not understand why those people kept consuming useless soul fragments.
From what he now understood about souls, casually eating that kind of thing could easily drive someone insane. Transplanting organs already caused rejection, let alone something as fundamental as a soul. Then he paused and realized those people were already mad, so it made sense after all.
"I have to say, your urban planning is pretty bad," he said casually. "Way too city-focused."
Belial opened his mouth wide and began to inhale. "I am kind-hearted, so I will help you renovate it with some super vibration waves."
Under his control, countless cubic meters of air poured into the abyss-like mouth of Abyss, forming a massive vortex. Violent storms erupted across surrounding regions as the airflow went wild. Four extremely condensed, rotating white rings also formed, nested together and devouring everything in the sky with terrifying efficiency.
"What is that?" "A dragon?"
As the clouds were consumed, soldiers finally saw a corner of a dazzling black-and-white streak. Only a few strong individuals could perceive its true form, an incomparably huge Black Dragon. The roaring wind sounded like thunder, a clear sign of catastrophe approaching.
Once he got closer, Belial released his restraint. Feeling it was still not enough, he tossed in the two fusion engines hanging behind him as well, treating them as freebies.
"Void g burst roar!" five times.
The storm finally answered with thunder. Five deafening explosions followed as ultra vibration waves, compressed to near physical substance, spread outward at extreme speed. Expanding air crushed downward like a world-ending flood, smashing everything below.
Lightning from Lightning Magic, freezing cold, and fusion-level heat mixed perfectly together, descending upon the sinful royal capital as divine punishment. The speed was extreme, and most of the power remained contained, with only the thunderous sound announcing its arrival.
Where it passed, everything was smoothed away. Mountains, rivers, and all else were shattered at the microscopic level and reduced to basic particles. The weaker shockwaves still flipped everything on the surface, though Belial's aim spared the outer armies.
It was like wiping a layer of the world clean with an eraser, leaving only a fan-shaped blank zone. Hundreds of millions of tons of mass vanished. Ancient mountain ranges turned to ash, and great rivers were severed and stripped of their beds.
In an instant, the wave crossed hundreds of kilometers. The rolling tide of particles slammed into the first wall. As both sides had expected, there was no suspense.
It was gone. The wall still stood, but several smooth, massive gaps had been carved through it. Under the following waves and material impact, it began to tremble and collapse.
A sound like a nuclear detonation erupted as the wall was washed away by the flood. The golden barrier that seemed unbreakable was pierced, uprooted, blasted apart, and sent flying in fragments.
"What a monster," Augustus muttered.
Standing atop the palace, he activated his Territorial Domain to redirect damage to other areas. The mechanism did not work on Belial, but it still worked on the attack itself. Even so, the flood continued to roll forward.
The power was weakened, but still overwhelming. Augustus felt twelve more cities within his land vanish instantly. Over two million controlled puppets were also destroyed, yet it still was not enough.
If this continued, the palace as the symbol of his authority would be erased. He had no choice but to act. A gigantic hand formed from broken weapons and remnants smashed forward together with the final wall, colliding head-on with the incoming wave.
A massive explosion followed. The mixed forces within erupted, and Augustus barely dispersed them at the cost of pulverizing everything within fifty kilometers outside the city. He blocked the first strike, but the attacks kept coming.
Roaring in anger, he abandoned all restraint and redirected the power outward. The compressed energy detonated, easily flattening tens or hundreds of kilometers. He blocked the first three this way.
The price was dozens of cities, nearly ten million lives, and the complete destruction of twenty city regions. Only the final and strongest wave remained. His walls were already gone, and after tanking the others, he could not redirect this one.
"Boom…"
Smoke and dust shot into the stratosphere, forming a massive mushroom cloud visible even to the approaching Belial. Below, a fireball expanded like a hydrogen bomb, barely stopped by Augustus. The ground shook violently as white shockwaves spread outward, crushing everything with sheer mass and heat.
Belial arrived and glanced down, nodding in satisfaction. "Much better terrain now. This kind of war criminal really suits a desert battlefield."
"You took five hits and lived. Not bad."
"…So you have finally come," Augustus said, blood at his lips.
He staggered up from the Throne, gripping his sword as the light around him dimmed. He had survived, but the cost was nearly the entire capital of the Empire. More than four-fifths of it was reduced to ruins, mountains shattered, and two massive burning craters over ten kilometers wide remained.
Standing amid this devastation, the emperor looked like a ruler of a fallen nation. He realized he had underestimated his enemy far too much. This had only been a probing attack, and the true the Lord body had already arrived.
This battle could not be avoided. He could try to flee, split his soul, or rely on vast territory to endure attacks, buying time if he wanted to survive a little longer. Yes, if he chose to run, he could live on.