The huge palace had been melted and ruined by extreme heat until it no longer had a clear shape, its surface carved with countless deep scars. From those wounds grew dense jungles of Crystal, spreading across the wreckage. What remained of its former grandeur was buried under destruction.
Above it, an entire magnificent mountain range rose from the ground, shaking loose countless fragments of Shard stone. The Planetary Ecological Avatar walked forward at a slow pace, making the land tremble with every step as it crushed all ecosystems that did not belong to it. Nothing survived where it passed.
The already ruined temple complex was smashed into millions of pieces, scattered throughout the Void. From every fragment grew clusters of Crystal that fed on their own foundations, only to be hunted again by drifting meteors within the Void. Destruction repeated itself in a closed loop.
From above, the Colossal Floating Island, almost as vast as Asia, had been torn apart by some unknown force using Rend. Massive chunks floated away, their edges jagged and unstable. The scale alone made it hard to grasp as a single battlefield.
At the very center lay the altar and the depths of the divine hall, where an invisible, fixed shadow darker than the Void itself spread like a tide. It invaded every corner of the area, while the towering body of Gundam pierced through the upper sky. Its presence dominated the space.
Endless resentment shaped its body, and its roar carried the combined hatred and fury of countless beings. Wrapped in a frightening aura, it descended and coiled there, its massive form occupying every inch of the land. It did not need to move to declare ownership.
Three eyes like a Rift fixed themselves on the creature in its grasp, now reduced to a single remaining head. That was all that was left. Nothing else had survived.
The head looked vaguely human, yet clearly not, covered in strange green hair like strands of seaweed. It had three eyes, a savage face, blue-green skin, and protruding fangs, the kind of appearance that immediately marked it as trouble. Still, Belial looked even less friendly.
The head was pinched between two giant claws, with no spine below it. Instead, a large ring of thread-like structures trailed beneath, resembling lotus roots. It was an unpleasant sight no matter how one looked at it.
This was the latest victim Belial had finally found. The thing had been huge, like a giant, and its shape felt oddly familiar, but Belial could not recall who it was. Since it did not matter, he did not bother remembering.
He only recalled that this thing had briefly appeared at the start of Mech Dragon, then had been beaten down in a humiliating way. That made it nothing special, and Belial did not care about its identity. Names were meaningless at this point.
Its enormous body below the neck had been split cleanly in two by two strikes of Divine Severing Thunder, along with the floating landmass itself. Those two halves had been tossed to nearby ecological Clone to be eaten. Belial knew that creatures like this might not die even if only dust remained, so questioning it first made sense.
That was assuming it could understand what he was saying. If it could not, then that was not his problem. If something wanted to live but could not even overcome a language barrier, it might as well die.
If it answered honestly, Belial was willing to give it a quick end. Unfortunately, the head showed no such courtesy. It seemed to want to spit something disgusting at him, but Belial predicted it in advance and erased it completely with a coronal Heat Ray.
"This is such a pain. After all this time, the one I finally find still refuses to say anything. Where am I supposed to go now?" As he muttered to himself, Belial casually pulled another red soul mass from the shattered skull. Judging by its size, it was not very impressive.
It was filled with resentment as well, and the moment it appeared, the surrounding darkness churned like boiling water. Shadows rippled and scattered in response. The reaction was familiar by now.
"Another weak one. Stronger than Manda, but still weak." After evaluating it, Belial expressionlessly tossed it into his mouth to digest. By the time he finished, the planetary-level Ecological Corrosion prepared for the Lord's meals was already ready, and he could keep eating.
His mood, however, was far from good. At first, he had thought entering this high-level area would bring real challenges, like that Dark Vortex he never even got a proper look at before it vanished. He had also expected other strong enemies, or even the worst case of being swarmed all at once, but reality was very different.
"These cowards are way too scared. They are all hiding. Where am I supposed to find anyone now?" That was the biggest crisis Belial faced at the moment. He could not find any targets marked on the map.
A player never feared too many red dots on the map. What they feared was having to search blindly for the next trigger condition. With no monsters to fight, high levels meant nothing.
This was especially true for a player like Belial. The task progress was completely stuck, and without enemies, strength meant nothing. No matter how strong he was, he could not move forward.
At the beginning, he could vaguely sense the presence of dozens of old monsters. Belial had planned to hunt them down one by one, snowballing his strength along the way. Instead, after killing only a few, all of them vanished into hiding.
Every single one hid themselves perfectly. Not a trace of their presence could be sensed. Losing all targets at once left him completely confused.
He wandered around longer than the entire time from entering this place to finishing off Manda. Despite moving nonstop, he only managed to find two enemies. The first had been killed and eaten before it realized how serious things were.
The second was the one just now, found with great difficulty. Belial had planned to interrogate it and dig out some secrets. He wanted to know where those dozens of monsters were hiding, whether they had gathering points, codes, or special search methods, but it clearly did not work.
"Finding the next one might take forever. This is miserable. No fights at all. What am I supposed to do now?" While swallowing the remaining ruins of the defeated enemy, Belial sighed again. Without monsters to farm, he could not get resources, and his strength could not grow.
This place was nothing like Starter Village. There, he could at least sleep in magma veins, eat freely, or find interesting things. Here, there was nothing, and the only thing to consume was resentment scattered everywhere.
Based on the passive absorption rate of resentment and fully digesting what he had just gained, Belial estimated his strength would at most double. That meant compared to when he first arrived, he could now only fight about four past versions of himself. That growth was far too slow.
To reach a goal of fighting ten of his former selves, he would probably need to sleep in this resentment-filled Void for several decades. The thought made him sigh again. After finishing off the last scraps, his body condensed from a massive black fog back into its original form, now nearly three hundred meters tall.
He had eaten everything clean, but it was not over yet. Belial spat out a large cluster of white glowing particles. These were the most fundamental light particles of souls.
He had only discovered them after eating the fourth kind soul, finding a huge pile hidden somewhere inside his body. Only then did he realize that while he had erased and absorbed the resentment and memories, the core soul light clusters remained untouched.
In the past, this had happened as well, but he usually ignored it. From observation, ordinary creatures' souls scattered after death, with memories fading away and only basic light particles remaining, drifting off somewhere unknown. In a place like this, though, he could not just throw them away.
So he kept them for now, planning to dump them later once he returned home. As for where to store them temporarily, he already had a solution. "Get in there."
He opened a door of light, tossed the white glow inside, and closed it. Done. He stored them in his translation pocket space, a trick he had discovered by accident, as the place seemed to naturally attract soul light particles.
He did not understand the principle, but since it was relatively safe, he did not worry about it. For some reason, after a while they would start drifting around inside, and even Reorganization could not fix it, but it was still better than holding them during combat.
"I still do not get it. A massive soul aggregate like this is not even an individual anymore. How did it become so strong?" He scratched his head, unable to figure it out. Belial had never tried absorbing or fusing these core soul lights, since the God of Destruction could not handle soul substances beyond resentment and even instinctively rejected them.
Now was not the time to sit around guessing answers anyway. He got back onto his Crystal little vehicle and resumed randomly searching through the Void. He sped around relying on his speed and wide scan range, but still could not find anyone.