He tried wrapping it with his usually unstoppable Energy Field to analyze it. Each time he approached, the energies collided and then vanished as if they canceled each other out. After that, it would randomly appear somewhere else on his body, leaving him no chance to act at all.
He could not enter Starter Village now, which made Mephist grind his teeth in frustration. It seemed he needed a more thorough solution. Had he not been told before that this was a mark left on him by that thing?
That meant that one day in the future, it would definitely come looking for him again. He snorted softly at the thought.
"When that time comes, I will beat you hard. Either listen to me and help me solve this before I beat you to death, or I will try killing you first and see if that fixes it."
If he could directly deal with the true source under the Lord, that might solve everything. That was how Belial saw it. Since that was the case, he needed to prepare for the battles that might come, and also repair his current body.
That meant the usual sleep phase that came after gaining a new template. During this time, the Lord would remodel his body so the abilities of the templates could work together smoothly and raise his physical level to where it should be. This time, he did not need to search for an energy source, since his own perpetual engine could sustain the entire process.
At most, he would occasionally need some raw material, asking Bella to dig up some soil from inside World. He sounded calm when he decided.
"Then I will sleep for now. It should not be for too long this time, and with the size of my internal calculation arrays, I probably will not sleep very deeply."
Reviewing his internal calculation array framework, it now covered almost his entire body after the framework under the Lord had been built. With the addition of The End, the properties of g-particles could likely be applied as well. This calculation array System could greatly speed up his transformation, and Belial would remain in a half-awake state, keeping part of his awareness connected to the outside.
The point was to prevent accidents while he slept, letting him still interfere with the outside world if needed. If he got bored or someone stirred up trouble, he could wake himself at any time to beat down any foolish fish that dared show its head.
"But what exactly will I turn into after I wake up? I really cannot tell."
"Well, that is about it."
After a brief farewell, Belial calmly pulled his wings over himself like a blanket, closed his eyes, and fell into deep sleep. Outside in Void, the enormous Black Dragon resting beyond the world slowly lost the brightness of the blood-colored marks on its face.
The storm-like roar of wind and thunder grew longer and heavier. The glow of its body dimmed slightly, yet its internal energy circulation continued at a steady pace, even accelerating within. Fueled endlessly by the g-particle perpetual engine, not only were all his battle injuries fully repaired, but his internal structure also began to change.
It was not just simple strengthening or tougher bones. The changes were far greater than that. Energy domains of Space, planetary high-dimensional evolution traits, the metaphysical properties shared by Diablo and Thousand-Year Dragon King, and the massive resentment Belial had consumed since gaining the Diablo template all became parts of his body.
If mere resentment from the Pacific War could give rise to the existence known as Diablo, then what kind of monster would be born from the countless years of accumulated resentment within World? There was also Dark Power, casually eaten by Belial and gained as a byproduct of devouring Divine Kingdom. Without him realizing it, these nourished a vast tree rooted within his planetary body.
Originally, for a planet to naturally evolve a body around three hundred meters tall on Earth would take twenty thousand years. After Belial devoured countless products of time and Dark Power in the form of Divine Kingdom, how many years should his time be counted as? These forces not only evolved to a shocking level, but also accumulated immense reserves and merged harmoniously within the domain of Space.
Perhaps one day in the future, while eating as usual, Belial would suddenly notice a small change in himself. But that had nothing to do with him right now. He was simply tired and wanted to sleep.
"Belial has entered a dormant phase. I need to prepare several more calculation arrays to record the data."
"Still, do these evolution sleeps only happen when Belial's energy reaches a certain threshold or stage? Every time, it feels like he turns into a completely different species."
"Did he have this before?"
Ham turned her head, surprised that this had happened before. When had Dragonkin ever done something like this? She was supposed to be the original genetic sample, yet she knew nothing about it.
"There was once before. Or maybe we only observed it once. This is the second time," Bella said honestly. "This time is just like the last. One moment he was evenly matched in the fight, and the next moment he woke up and ended it with one punch."
She still remembered the decisive battle at the nano City. One second earlier, she could still fight the mechanical Belial back and forth, and the next second he suddenly woke up and finished it instantly.
"Since we cannot explain it, we just call it cheating."
"But a large part of it might be that he never turned it off in the first place."
"So how long does he usually sleep? Hundreds of years?" Ham asked.
Bella shook her head. "We have no accurate data, but at most it is probably only a few decades. It passes in the blink of an eye."
"That really is short," Ham muttered.
She looked back once more at the enormous black figure sleeping beyond the world, still unable to understand it. In the end, she let it go, since mysteries around Belial were nothing new. Leaving the temporary external observation station Bella had hastily built for him, she returned to World and rubbed her chin.
"The End… no, I cannot just sit around. I need to go push the progress along."
"So soon we are moving to Holy City?"
Alba was sitting on the sofa, chewing chips together with Raina while chatting about the latest comics. The moment Elvin pushed the door open and spoke, her words landed cleanly and left Alba stunned.
The meaning was simple. This area had already gathered almost all the popularity it could, so it was no longer suitable to stay, and they needed to move to a more the Lord-important Diocese, namely Holy City, to continue the next round of selection and evaluation. Hearing this, Alba grew tense at once, and even eating chips felt awkward.
No, how could the progress be this fast? There should have been at least a few more months, so why were they leaving already? Recently she had not done much at all, apart from the usual outings under the lights, special effects, and stage setups to gather popularity, plus healing nearly ten thousand people with her skills.
Sweat broke out on Alba's back as she started thinking it over again. Her Simulator had been acting up lately, sometimes failing and sometimes usable, but it had not predicted this situation at all. How long had she even been here before suddenly heading straight for Holy City, the final stage everyone talked about?
Thinking of that, Alba glanced again at the Simulator interface that only she could see. She kept chewing chips, but inside she could only let out a quiet, helpless sigh. At this point, she no longer expected the Flight Simulator to be of much use, and treated it as little more than an Assassin's Codex simulator.
It was not that it was useless. Predicting the future was certainly helpful, and Alba had benefited from it many times. The problem was that when real powerhouses got involved, the future was handled like a rag, twisted at will, and any big event made all prior plans meaningless.
It was not just once or twice either. Almost every prediction went wrong, with unexpected variables popping up every time, and because of that the Simulator kept dropping offline. It had happened several times over the past few days, and the most recent one was still fresh in her mind.
Her thoughts drifted, recalling that moment when the positions of heaven and earth seemed to change. The entire World looked as if it had been broken into Shard and reassembled like a puzzle by some existence. There was no doubt that it had been the work of true gods, because only they could accomplish something like that.
At that time, she had felt helpless in a way she never had before. The whole World was shifting into chaotic disorder, and yet she alone seemed to remain normal, or perhaps it was the opposite, and she herself had been the abnormal one. Even though things returned to normal later for reasons she did not understand, the lingering fear never really left.