After clapping his hands and finishing everything, Belial looked at the scattered pile of red souls in his hands and started to show off. He analyzed the information at the same time, since when he picked these red souls up, he had thought the owner was already dead and just dropped Gold Coins over a wide area.
Only later did he realize that if this thing had not tried to steal his friend's account, he might not have noticed at all. He checked the memories for useful information and found nothing, as usual. After chewing it up and finishing the analysis, he felt that Hedorah's memories were even worse than Anguirus's.
Those fragmented memories were at least broken clips stacked together. This was just mud, with every detail smashed into Shard, taken apart, mixed, and repeated countless times. The only common point was that Belial did not want to look at it, since it made him sick and offered nothing useful.
He had no interest in old history, only recent fragments. Aside from some unpleasant sacrifice scenes, there was a very distinct aura mark. Based on his memory search, it should belong to one of his many old acquaintances, though he could not place which one.
Still, that was not bad, since it meant the other side had a chance of showing themselves, or was nearby. He decided to camp in the area and do a carpet scan, killing anything that dared to pop up. After stirring and swallowing the rest of Hedorah's soul, he admitted that while it was ugly, weak, and ridiculous, the quantity was decent.
That thought made Belial think of a good idea related to the Lord. He found Hedorah thanks to the prayer signal leaking from that small Rift. Maybe he could leave behind beacons that constantly sent out signals as bait, instead of broadcasting like before and blowing everyone up at once.
This was fishing, spreading a wide enough net so some stupid fish would run into it. As long as it was a single target, Belial was confident he could eat it, as long as it was not something outrageous. As for signals, his earlier inspiration was still working, and he felt this place might support communication after all.
It would need signal stations as intermediaries, but that was not realistic. Cost was always a problem, and the area was simply too large. He joked that even flying nonstop in superluminal cosmic Crystal mode would not cover it easily, and the delay was absurd, though he had not tested extreme long-range communication yet.
The base station issue was already partly solved. Those massive Crystal aggregates he once shaped for his MVP moments were not just for show. Originally used as position references, with some modification they could serve as signal stations, with a few ecological Clone left there.
Thinking of Clone made him feel a bit regretful. The distance was too far, and the Clone he left near Starter Village were mostly emergency setups that did not move often. Otherwise, his main body could rampage here while the Clone slacked off there, even taking shifts when tired.
He paused and wondered if it was possible. After a moment, he decided to try.
Belial began separating his main consciousness, attempting to connect to a distant Clone, which caused consequences. The Great Dragon Clone stuck at a Rift twisted its heads slightly, drew a round of shocked cries, and then went offline.
The small knife in the black mist hand slipped, carving a deep scar. Chloe, wearing glasses, brushed her long hair aside, froze briefly, and fell into thought, wondering if this was supposed to be a battle-damaged version. Belial tested most of his Clone and found that most did not work.
It was not that larger mass meant better connection. While they could bear more of his power, they were harder to link and control, and with weak signal conditions, sheer size became a burden. Even with ecological support and base station amplification, he could not remotely control Clone at that level.
So he turned to the opposite idea. Could he control very small units? He realized he did not remember leaving anything that small, then suddenly sensed one.
After detecting such a unit, Belial widened his eyes and tried to connect. It was extremely small, perhaps only the size of a water bucket compared to his usual nearly hundred-meter Black Mist Form. It was weak, contained almost none of his consciousness, and yet felt familiar.
He paused and then remembered. It was the little girl whose heart he had molded from a scale. He had even taken control once.
Belial remembered it clearly, since that proxy fight was special. He discovered the Thousand-Year Dragon King hidden in his body and gained a useful translation space, even if the machine translation was terrible. Only now did he realize he had forgotten to clean up the aftermath of his influence.
After consuming so much, Belial understood how dangerous his power was. Without limits, given time, he could devour even the entire Solar System. Even leftovers without active activation could grow into an ecological scale if left alone, especially if special individuals emerged.
Before arriving, he had not sensed anything like that. If not much time had passed, it should be fine, and it did not feel like he had been gone long. He wondered what the girl looked like now and noticed something off with her physical condition.
His will extended and finally touched a very weak point. The heart pumped faster, blood flow accelerated, and faint black patterns became clear and spread. He immediately sensed that the bones and height did not match a small child, more like an adolescent.
He questioned whether he had the wrong person or if children in the Otherworld grew this fast. Then he sensed a familiar aura, filled with darkness and faint wailing souls, a contract he knew too well. It belonged to his old acquaintances, mixed with traces of a race he had dealt with before.
He decided to see what was happening outside. Although he had taken over before, he did not like casually entering other bodies, so he first borrowed her perspective. What he saw was a crazed cultist with the wrong kind of presence, covered in flames and charging with two warped greatswords.
He cursed in shock. Facing the attacking cultist, Nefit planned to block with her sword, rebound to shed force, and find an opening. Suddenly, her chest thumped violently.
The faint black lines near her cheek became striking and spread rapidly. From her heart, the blood vessels darkened outward, and the accelerated heartbeat worsened it. A thorn-like scar of a Companion appeared on her forehead, along with a surge of power.
It was an absurd level of power. Lowering her head, Nefit barely blocked with the Greatsword and was sent flying by the cultist's immense strength. She smashed through dozens of giant trees, slammed into a cliff wall, blasted a crater tens of meters wide, and finally landed on her feet.
The violent impact and mental shock made her dizzy, and she fell asleep. Someone shouted her name. Above, Icelis crushed the candy in her mouth and moved to intervene, but felt sudden dread.
The darkened Battle Aura erupted into a violent vortex that shot skyward. The Greatsword swung, and the wind tore through the blockbuster forest ahead, grinding it into powder. Iron-rich stones floated up and began to orbit as Nefit slowly walked forward.
Her eyes turned toward a distant point.
"What is going on?"
Observing from afar, Fei'er Li noticed that the section in her book related to Nefit was changing in an abnormal way, and it was not just the blockbuster area turning blurry. The pure white pages were slowly stained black, as if covered by something extremely sticky, to the point that Fei'er Li could no longer even turn the pages.
Something had gone wrong on Nefit's side. That was Fei'er Li's immediate reaction.
She had originally only brought her students, along with Icelis, to visit Holy City and the Saintess Selection held between several nearby Cathedral City locations, while also scouting future team members. Yet the moment they arrived, they ran into another local specialty that used to be quite common, the Abyss Church whose beliefs nobody could ever figure out.
They were the kind who liked to randomly grab unlucky passersby for sacrifice. Fei'er Li did not want to become that unlucky passerby herself, and she could not tolerate such things anyway, so after estimating that their strength was not high, with barely any reaching Silver Rank, she let them serve as practice targets for Nefit and the others.
Even though it was just practice, considering the strange nature of those monsters, she had Icelis watch them closely. She also had her remove anything that could serve as a ritual altar or sacrificial item first, then cripple most of them before sending them in.
She never expected that even with such precautions, letting one or two small fry slip through would still cause an accident. What shocked her even more was that the accident showed up in this mysterious book whose origin she still could not understand.
"What is happening? These power values... no, all the values are rising. Why are they increasing this fast?"